על הכרובים כ״אOn the Cherubim 21
א׳
1[67] Surely Laban, whose heart was fixed on particular qualities, must have made Jacob laugh loud and long, Jacob who discerns rather than these the nature which is outside class or category. Laban dared to say to him “the daughters are my daughters, the sons are my sons, the cattle are my cattle, and all that thou seest are mine and my daughters’ ” (Gen. 31:43). In each case he adds the “my,” and his proud talk about himself goes on without ceasing.
ב׳
2[68] The daughters, tell me—daughters, you know, are the arts and branches of knowledge in the soul—do you say they are your daughters? How yours? Why in the first place you only received them from the mind that taught them to you. Secondly, it is in the course of nature that like other things you should lose them too, perhaps through the burden of other thoughts which drive them from your memory, or through cruel and incurable infirmities of the body, or that disease which is the doom of advancing years and no treatment can heal—old age—or a host of other causes, which no man can number.
ג׳
3[69] The sons—sons are the particular reasoned thoughts—when you say they are yours are you sane or mad to suppose such a thing? Fits of melancholy and insanity, bursts of frenzy, baseless conjectures, false impressions of things, mere notions, which are but unsubstantial will-o’-the-wisps made of the stuff of dreams, with their self-engendered throes and throbbings, loss of memory, the curse which so besets the soul, and other things more numerous than these, sap the security of your lordship, and show that these things are not your possessions but another’s.
ד׳
4[70] As for the cattle—the senses, that is, for sense is unreasoning and bestial—do you dare to say that they are yours? Consider your constant errors in sight and hearing, how you sometimes think bitter flavours sweet and sweet bitter, and in every sense are more often wrong than right. Surely a matter for blushing rather than for boasting and elation, as though you found all the faculties and activities of your soul infallible.
