על שינוי השמות כ״טOn the Change of Names 29
א׳
1[154] These promises might well have puffed up the mind to soar into the heights. But to convict us, so often proud-necked at the smallest cause, he falls down and straightway laughs (Gen. 17:17) with the laughter of the soul, mournfulness in his face, but smiles in his mind, where joy vast and unalloyed has made its lodging.
ב׳
2[155] For the sage who receives an inheritance of good beyond his hope these two things are simultaneous—to fall and to laugh. He falls as a pledge that the proved nothingness of mortality keeps him from vaunting: he laughs to shew that the thought that God alone is the cause of good and gracious gifts makes strong his piety.
ג׳
3[156] Let created being fall with mourning in its face; it is only what nature demands, so feeble in footing is it, so sad of heart in itself. Then let it be raised up by God and laugh, for God alone is its support and its joy.
ד׳
4[157] One might reasonably question how it is possible for anyone to laugh, when laughter had not yet come into being among us. For Isaac is laughter, which according to the view before us is not yet born. For as we cannot see without eyes nor hear without ears, nor smell without nostrils nor use the other senses without the corresponding organs, nor apprehend without the power of thought, so the act of laughing would be against all probability if laughter had not yet been created.
ה׳
5[158] What shall we say then? Nature often provides signs which shew us beforehand future happenings. Do you not often see how the fledgling, before it actually oars its way in the air, likes to flutter or shake its wings, thus giving a welcome promise of ability to fly hereafter?
ו׳
6[159] Or how the lamb or the he-goat or the youngling ox, if one provoke it, fronts its opponent and starts to defend itself with those parts from which spring the weapons of defence which Nature provides?
ז׳
7[160] Again, in the arena the bulls do not at once gore their antagonists, but set their legs well apart, bend their necks slightly, and turn them either way with a truly bull-like glare, and only then do they attack and shew a mind to set to in earnest. This kind of thing, one impulse, that is, precluding another, is called orousis, or “springing,” by those who practise word-coining.