על הכרובים י״חOn the Cherubim 18
א׳
1[58] That it should have been so with the Mind was not strange. For there was a time when Mind neither had sense-perception, nor held converse with it, but a great gulf divided it from associated interdependent things. Rather was it then like the solitary ungregarious animals. At that time it formed a class by itself; it had no contact with body, no all-collecting instrument in its grasp wherewith to bring into its power the external objects of sense. It was blind, incapable, not in the common meaning of blindness as applied to those whom we observe to have lost their eyesight, for they though deprived of one sense have the others more abundantly.
ב׳
2[59] No, the Mind was docked of all its powers of sense-perception, thus truly powerless. It was but half the perfect soul, lacking the power whereby it is the nature of bodies to be perceived, a mere unhappy section bereft of its mate without the support of the sense-perceiving organs, whereby it could have propped as with a staff its faltering steps. And thus all bodily objects were wrapped in profound darkness and none of them could come to the light. For sense, the means whereby they were to become the objects of knowledge, was not.
ג׳
3[60] God then, wishing to provide the Mind with perception of material as well as immaterial things, thought to complete the soul by weaving into the part first made the other section, which he called by the general name of “woman” and the proper name of “Eve,” thus symbolizing sense.
