על הכרובים ל״גOn the Cherubim 33
א׳
1[116] Is my mind my own possession? That parent of false conjectures, that purveyor of delusion, the delirious, the fatuous, and in frenzy or melancholy or senility proved to be the very negation of mind. Is my utterance my own possession, or my organs of speech? A little sickness is a cause sufficient to cripple the tongue and sew up the lips of the most eloquent, and the expectation of disaster paralyses multitudes into speechlessness.
ב׳
2[117] Not even of my sense-perception do I find myself master, rather, it may well be, its slave, who follows it where it leads, to colours, shapes, sounds, scents, flavours, and the other material things.
ג׳
3All this surely makes it plain that what we use are the possessions of another, that nor glory, nor wealth, nor honours, nor offices, nor all that makes up body or soul are our own, not even life itself.
ד׳
4[118] And if we recognize that we have but their use, we shall tend them with care as God’s possessions, remembering from the first, that it is the master’s custom, when he will, to take back his own. The thought will lighten our sorrow when they are taken from us. But as it is, with the mass of men, the belief that all things are their own makes their loss or absence at once a source of grief and trouble.
ה׳
5[119] And so the thought that the world and all that therein is are both the works and the possessions of Him that begat them becomes not only a truth but a doctrine most comfortable.
ו׳
6But this work which is His own He has bestowed freely, for He needs it not. Yet he who has the use does not thereby become possessor, because there is one lord and master of all, who will most rightly say “all the land is mine (which is the same as ‘all creation is mine’), but ye are strangers and sojourners before me” (Lev. 25:23).
