על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר דOn the Special Laws, Book IV
א׳
1THE SPECIAL LAWS BOOK IV
On The Special Laws Which Fall Under Three Of The Ten Commandments, The Eighth Against Stealing, The Ninth Against Bearing False Witness, The Tenth Against Covetousness, And On Laws Which Fall Under Each, And On Justice Which Is Proper To All Ten, Which Concludes The Whole Treatise.
[1] The laws directed against adultery and murder and the offences which fall under either head have been already discussed with all possible fullness as I venture to think. But we must also examine the one which follows next in order, the third in the second table or eighth in the two taken together, which forbids stealing.
On The Special Laws Which Fall Under Three Of The Ten Commandments, The Eighth Against Stealing, The Ninth Against Bearing False Witness, The Tenth Against Covetousness, And On Laws Which Fall Under Each, And On Justice Which Is Proper To All Ten, Which Concludes The Whole Treatise.
[1] The laws directed against adultery and murder and the offences which fall under either head have been already discussed with all possible fullness as I venture to think. But we must also examine the one which follows next in order, the third in the second table or eighth in the two taken together, which forbids stealing.
ב׳
2[2] Anyone who carries off any kind of property belonging to another and to which he has no right must be written down as a public enemy, if he does so openly and with violence, because he combines shameless effrontery with defiance of the law. But if he does it secretly and tries to avoid observation like a thief, since his ashamedness serves to palliate his misdeeds, he must be punished in his private capacity, and, as he is liable only for the damage which he has attempted to work, he must repay the stolen goods twofold and thus by the damage which he most justly suffers make full amends for the injustice of his gains.
ג׳
3[3] If his lack of means makes the payment of this penalty impossible he must be sold, since it is only right that one who has allowed himself to become a slave to profit-making of an utterly lawless kind should be deprived of his liberty. And in this way the injured party also will not be turned away without a solatium or seem to have his interest neglected through the impecuniosity of the thief.
ד׳
4[4] No one should denounce this sentence as inhuman, for the person sold is not left a slave for all time but he is released at or before the seventh year under the general proclamation as I have shown in the treatise on the seventh day.
ה׳
5[5] Nor need he complain because he has to repay twice the value of the stolen goods, or even if he is sold. For he is guilty in several ways. First because dissatisfied with what he has he desires a greater abundance and thus fortifies the malignant and well-nigh deadly passion of coveteousness. Secondly because it is the property of others which he eyes so avidly and sets his snares to secure for himself and deprive the owners of their possession. Thirdly because the concealment which he also practises, while it secures him the profits of the business often for his sole enjoyment, leads him to divert the charge in each case to innocent persons and so blindfold the quest for the truth.
ו׳
6[6] It would seem too that he is his own accuser, since his conscience convicts him when he filches in this stealthy way, for he must be actuated by shame or fear. Shame is a sign that he feels his conduct to be disgraceful, for only disgraceful actions are followed by shame. Fear would show that he considers himself to deserve punishment, for it is the thought of punishment which produces terror.
ז׳
7[7] If anyone crazed with a passion for other people’s property sets himself to take it by theft and, because he cannot easily manage it by stealth, breaks into a house during the night, using the darkness to cloak his criminal doings, he may, if caught in the act before sunrise, be slain by the householder in the very place where he has broken in. Though actually engaged on the primary but minor crime of theft he is intending the major though secondary crime of murder, since he is prepared if prevented by anyone to defend himself with the iron burglar’s tools which he carries and other weapons. But if the sun has risen the case is different; he must not be killed off hand but taken before magistrates and judges to pay such penalties as they prescribe.
ח׳
8[8] For in the night time when rulers and ordinary citizens alike are settled down at home and retiring to rest, the aggrieved person cannot seek out any one to succour him, and therefore he must take the punishment into his own hands, as the occasion appoints him to be magistrate and judge.
ט׳
9[9] In the day time however law courts and council chambers stand wide open and there are plenty of people to help him in the city, some of them elected to maintain the laws, others who without such election are so moved by their hatred of evil that they need none to bid them to take the rôle of championing the injured. Before these must the thief be brought, for in this way the owner will escape the charges of wilfulness and recklessness and show that he protects himself in the spirit of true democracy.
י׳
10[10] And if the sun is above the horizon he must be held guilty if he anticipates justice by killing him off hand. He has preferred angry passion to reason and subordinated the law to his personal desire for vengeance. “My friend,” I would say to him, “do not because you have been wronged by a thief in the night time commit in daylight a more grievous theft, in which the spoil is not money but the principles of justice, on which the ordering of the commonwealth is based.”
י״א
11[11] Other stolen goods then are to be paid for at twice their value, but if the thief has taken a sheep or an ox the law estimates them worthy of a larger penalty, thus giving precedence to the animals which excel all the other domesticated kinds not only in comeliness of body but in the benefits they bring to human life. This was the reason why he made a difference even between the two just named in the amount of the penalty to be paid. He reckoned up the services which each of them renders and ordained that the compensation should correspond thereto.
י״ב
12[12] The thief has to pay four sheep but five oxen for the one that he has stolen because the sheep renders four contributions, milk, cheese, wool and the lambs which are born every year, while the ox makes five, three the same as the sheep, of milk, cheese and offspring, and two peculiar to itself, ploughing and threshing, the first of them being the beginning of the sowing of the crops, the second their end, serving to purge them when harvested and make them more ready to be used as food.
י״ג
13[13] The kidnapper too is a kind of thief who steals the best of all the things that exist on the earth. In the case of lifeless articles and such animals as do not render high benefits to life, the value by order of the law has to be repaid twofold to the owner by the purloiners, as I have said above, and again fourfold and fivefold in the case of the most domesticated kinds of livestock, sheep and oxen.
י״ד
14[14] But it is the lot of man, as we see, to occupy the place of highest excellence among living creatures because his stock is near akin to God, sprung from the same source in virtue of his participation in reason which gives him immortality, mortal though he seems to be. And therefore everyone who is inspired with a zeal for virtue is severe of temper and absolutely implacable against men-stealers, who for the sake of a most unrighteous profit do not shrink from reducing to slavery those who not only are freemen by birth but are of the same nature as themselves.
ט״ו
15[15] If it is a praiseworthy action when masters in the humaneness of their hearts release from the yoke of servitude their home-bred or purchased slaves, though often they have brought them no great profit, how great a condemnation do they deserve who rob those who enjoy liberty of that most precious of all possessions for which men of noble birth and breeding feel that it is an honour to die.
ט״ז
16[16] Indeed we have known of some who improve on their inborn depravity and developing the malice of their disposition to complete heartlessness have directed their man-stealing operations, not only against men of other countries and other races but also against those of their own nation, sometimes their fellow wardsmen or tribesmen. They disregard their partnership in the laws and customs in which they have been bred from their earliest years, customs which stamp the sense of benevolence so firmly on the souls of all who are not exceedingly barbarous nor make a practice of cruelty.
י״ז
17[17] For the sake of an utterly unlawful profit they sell their captives to slave dealers or any chance comers to live in slavery in a foreign land never to return, never even to dream of again saluting the soil of their native country or to know the taste of comforting hope. Their iniquity would be less if they themselves retained the services of their captives. As it is, their guilt is doubled when they barter them away and raise up to menace them two masters instead of one and two successive servitudes.
י״ח
18[18] For they themselves, as they know the former prosperity of those who are now in their power, might perhaps come to a better mind and feel a belated pity for their fallen state, remembering with awe how uncertain and incalculable fortune is, while the purchasers knowing nothing of their origin and supposing them to have generations of servitude behind them will despise them, and have nothing in their souls to incline them to that natural gentleness and humanity which they may be expected to maintain in dealing with the free born.
י״ט
19[19] The punishment for kidnapping, if the captives belong to foreign nations, should be such as is adjudged by the court; if they are fellow nationals whom they have not only kidnapped but sold, it is death without hope of reprieve. Yes indeed, for such persons are kinsfolk, bound by a tie closely bordering on blood relationship though with a wider compass.
כ׳
20[20] “In the country also lawsuits spring up,” says one of the ancients. Examples of greed and the desire for other people’s property are found not only in the town but also outside its walls, since that desire is based not on differences of situation but on the thoughts of insatiable and quarrelsome men.
כ״א
21[21] And therefore the most law-abiding states elect two kinds of superintendents and magistrates to maintain the general safety and good order, one kind to act within the walls called “town warden,” the other outside them bearing the appropriate name of “country warden,” and what need could there be of the last if there were not people in the landed estates also who lived to do harm to their neighbours?
כ״ב
22[22] So if anyone in charge of sheep or goats or a herd of any kind feeds and pastures his beasts in the fields of another and does nothing to spare the fruits or the trees, he must recoup the owner in kind by property of equal value.
כ״ג
23[23] And he must suffer this without complaining. The law has shown itself reasonable and exceedingly forgiving in its treatment of him. Though his actions are such as are committed in internecine war, where it is customary to lay waste arable fields and destroy the cultivated plants, it has not punished him as a public enemy by sentencing him to death or banishment, or at the very least to forfeiture of his whole property, but merely called upon him to make good the damage to the owner.
כ״ד
24[24] For since it always seeks pretexts for alleviating the state of the unfortunate, so vast is the gentleness and humanity which it owes to nature and practice, it discovered a well-sounding plea to defend the grazier in the irrational and refractory nature of cattle, particularly when they hanker for food.
כ״ה
25[25] The trespasser must therefore be held responsible to justice for originally driving the herd into a field where they ought not to be, but should not bear the guilt of all its results, for it may well be that when he perceived the harm they were doing he tried to drive them out as fast as he could, but they as they were browsing on the herbage and taking their fill of tender fruits and plants resisted his efforts.
כ״ו
26[26] But people do damage not merely by grazing their cattle on the property of others but also by starting a fire without circumspection or foresight. For the force of fire when it has caught hold of the inflammable stuff shoots out in every direction and spreads itself abroad, and when it has once got the mastery it takes no account of any extinguishers applied to it and indeed makes full use of them as fuel to foster its growth until it has consumed them all and dies out from self-exhaustion.
כ״ז
27[27] Now no one should ever leave a fire unguarded either in house or outbuilding as he knows that a single smouldering spark is often fanned into a blaze and sets fire to great cities, particularly when the flame streams along under a carrying wind.
כ״ח
28[28] Thus in bitterly contested wars the chief instrument of efficiency first intermediate and final is fire, and on this combatants rely more than on their squadrons of infantry and cavalry and marines and their lavishly provided equipments of arms and engines. For a conflagration caused by a man shooting a fire-bearing arrow at the right place into a great fleet of ships has been known to consume it with the troops on board or to annihilate armies of considerable strength with the equipments on which they had rested their hopes of victory.
כ״ט
29[29] Accordingly if a single person sets a heap of thorns alight and they burst into a flame which goes on to ignite a threshing floor full of wheat or barley or vetch or stacked sheaves of corn in the ear or rich soiled meadow land where herbage is growing, the person who lighted the fire must pay for the damage and thus learn by experience to guard carefully against the first beginnings of things and to refrain from stirring up and setting in action an invincible and naturally destructive force which might otherwise remain in quiescence.
ל׳
30[30] The most sacred of all the dealings between man and man is the deposit on trust, as it is founded on the good faith of the person who accepts it. Formal loans are guaranteed by contracts and written documents, and articles lent openly without such formality have the testimony of the eye-witnessess.
ל״א
31[31] But that is not the method of deposits. There a man gives something with his own hands secretly to another when both are alone. He looks carefully all round him and does not even bring a slave, however loyal, with him to act as carrier, for the object which both of them evidently pursue is that it should be impossible to show what has happened. The one wishes that nobody should observe his gift, the other that no one should know of his acceptance. And this unseen transaction has assuredly the unseen God as its intermediary, to whom both naturally appeal as their witness, one that he will restore the property when demanded, the other that he will recover it at the proper time.
ל״ב
32[32] So then he who repudiates a deposit must be assured that he acts most wrongfully. He deceives the hopes of the friend who confided his goods to him. He has disguised under fair words the vileness of his character. In the faithlessness of his heart he has assumed the mask of a bastard faithfulness. The assurance of the hands given and taken is rendered null and void, the oaths are unfulfilled. Thus he has set at nought both the human and the divine and repudiated two trusts, one that of him who consigned his property, the other that of the most veracious of witnesses who sees and hears all whether they intend or do not wish to do what they say.
ל״ג
33[33] But if the deposit, which the receiver accepts as something sacred and feels bound to keep unharmed because of his reverence for truth and good faith, is purloined by stealthy mischievous intruders, cutpurses and burglars on the watch to take what does not belong to them, the offenders if caught must pay a fine of double the value.
ל״ד
34[34] If they are not caught the receiver of the trust must go of his own freewill to the court of God and with hands stretched out to heaven swear under pain of his own perdition that he has not embezzled any part of the deposit nor abetted another in so doing nor joined at all in inventing a theft which never took place. Otherwise an innocent party would be mulcted and the person who ran to avail himself of the good faith of a friend would on account of the wrong he has suffered from others cause injury to that friend, and either of these is preposterous.
ל״ה
35[35] But deposits include not only inanimate things but living animals who are liable to be endangered in two ways: one by theft which they share with the inanimate, the other by death which is peculiar to themselves. The first of these has been dealt with above and we must proceed to lay down laws for the second.
ל״ו
36[36] So if any animal left in trust dies the person who has accepted the trust must send for the consigner and show him the dead body, thus shielding himself against any suspicion of dishonesty. If the consigner is absent from home, it would not be right for the caretaker to summon other people from whom the depositor may have wished to keep the matter secret, but when he has come home he must swear to him to show that he is not using a fictitious death to cloak an embezzlement.
ל״ז
37[37] But if any utensil or any animal has been received not as a trust but for his use in response to a request and then either of these is stolen, or the animal dies, the borrower will not be responsible if the lender is living on the spot, since he can call him to witness that there is no pretence. If he is not living on the spot the borrower must make good the loss.
ל״ח
38[38] Why is this? Because in the absence of the owner the borrower may either have worn out the animal by constantly overworking it and so have caused its death, or may have risked the loss of the utensil out of carelessness for what is another man’s property, whereas he is bound to keep it carefully and not provide thieves with facilities for carrying it off.
ל״ט
39[39] The lawgiver with his unsurpassed power of discerning how things follow each other gives a series of successive prohibitions in which he aims at logical connexion, and makes a harmonious combination of the subsequent with the preceding. He tells us that this accordance between each thing said and each thing still to be said is proclaimed in an oracle spoken by God in his own person in the following terms “Ye shall not steal and ye shall not lie and ye shall not bring false accusations against your neighbours and ye shall not swear in my name to an injustice and ye shall not profane my name.”
מ׳
40[40] Excellent indeed and full of instructions, for the thief convicted by his conscience disowns the deed and lies through fear of the punishment which confession entails. Then he who disowns his deed in his eagerness to fasten the charge on someone else brings a false accusation and devises schemes to make the accusation seem probable. And every such accuser is necessarily a perjurer with little regard for piety, for since he lacks just arguments he takes refuge in the unscientific method of proof, as it is called, namely that of oaths, because he thinks that by appeal to God he makes his hearers believe him. Such a one may be assured that he is unholy and profane, since he pollutes the good name which is by nature unpolluted, the name of God.
מ״א
41[41] “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” This is the ninth of the ten heads but the fourth in number of those on the second table. Numberless are the blessings which it can bring to human life if kept, numberless on the other hand the injuries which it causes if disregarded;
מ״ב
42[42] for reprehensible as is the false accuser his guilt is less than that of the bearer of false witness. The former acts as his own champion, the latter as the accomplice of another, and if we compare one bad man with another the iniquity of one who sins for his own sake is less than his who sins for the sake of another.
מ״ג
43[43] The judge looks with disfavour on the accuser as a person who cares little for truth in his eagerness to win his case, and this is the reason why introductory addresses are required to secure the attention of the hearer to the speaker. But the judge starts with no lurking feelings of hostility to the witness and therefore he listens with a free judgement and open ears, while the other assumes the mask of good faith and truth, names indeed of the most valuable realities, but the most seductive of names when used as baits to capture something which is earnestly desired.
מ״ד
44[44] And therefore in many places of the Law Book he exhorts us not to consent to an unjust man or unjust action, for consent, if not rendered on honest grounds, is an inducement to testify to falsehoods, just as everyone to whom injustice gives a feeling of pain and hostility is a friend of truth.
מ״ה
45[45] Now when a single man of bad character invites us to do as he does there is nothing remarkable in a refusal to share his wicked folly, but when a multitude is carried away in a rushing mass as down a steep slope to lawlessness, it needs a noble soul and a spirit trained to manliness to keep from being carried with them.
מ״ו
46[46] Some people suppose that what the many think right is lawful and just, though it be the height of lawlessness. But they do not judge well, for it is good to follow nature, and the headlong course of the multitude runs counter to what nature’s leading would have us do.
מ״ז
47[47] So if some people collect in groups or crowded assemblages to give trouble, we must not consent to their debasing of the long established and sterling coinage of civic life.
מ״ח
48Better than many hands is one wise thought,
מ״ט
49A multitude of fools makes folly worse.
נ׳
50[48] But some show such an excess of wickedness that they not only lay to the charge of men things which have never occurred but persisting in their wickedness exalt and extend the falsehood to heaven and bear testimony against the blessed and ever happy nature of God. These are the interpreters of portents and auguries and of sacrificial entrails, and all the other proficients in divination who practise an art which is in reality a corruption of art, a counterfeit of the divine and prophetic possession.
נ״א
51[49] For no pronouncement of a prophet is ever his own; he is an interpreter prompted by Another in all his utterances, when knowing not what he does he is filled with inspiration, as the reason withdraws and surrenders the citadel of the soul to a new visitor and tenant, the Divine Spirit which plays upon the vocal organism and dictates words which clearly express its prophetic message.
נ״ב
52[50] Now everyone who pursues the spurious scurvy trade of divination ranks his surmises and conjectures with truth, a position ill-suited to them, and easily gets the unstable of character into his power; then with a mighty counterblast as it were he pushes about and upsets their unballasted barks and prevents them from coming to port in the sure roadsteads of piety. For he thinks he must proclaim the results of his guessing to be not his own discovery but divine oracles, secretly vouchsafed to him alone, and thus confirm the great multitudes which gather around him in their acceptance of the fraud.
נ״ג
53[51] Such a person receives from the lawgiver the appropriate name of false prophet, for he adulterates the true prophecy and with his spurious inventions throws the genuine into the shade. But in quite a short time such manoeuvres are exposed, for it is not nature’s way to be concealed for ever but when the right time comes she uses her invincible powers to unveil the beauty which is hers alone.
נ״ד
54[52] For as in eclipses of the sun the rays are dimmed for a very short time but soon shine again spreading a light unshadowed and far-reaching, when the sun is not obscured at all by any intervening object but displays its whole surface in clear open sky, just so though some oracle-mongers may ply their false art of divination, masked under the specious name of prophecy, and palm off their ecstatic utterances upon the Godhead, they will easily be detected. Truth will come back and shine again, illuminating the far distance with its radiance, and the lie which overshadowed it will vanish away.
נ״ה
55[53] He added another excellent injunction when he forbade them to accept the evidence of a single person, first because the single person may see or hear imperfectly or misunderstand and be deceived, since false opinions are numberless and numberless too the sources from which they spring to attack us.
נ״ו
56[54] Secondly because it is most unjust to accept a single witness against more than one or even against one: against more than one, because their number makes them more worthy of credence than the one: against one, because the witness has not got preponderance of number, and equality is incompatible with predominance. For why should the statement of a witness made in accusation of another be accepted in preference to the words of the accused spoken in his own defence? Where there is neither deficiency nor excess it is clearly best to suspend judgement.
נ״ז
57[55] The law holds that all who conform to the sacred constitution laid down by Moses must be exempt from every unreasoning passion and every vice in a higher degree than those who are governed by other laws, and that this particularly applies to those who are appointed to act as judges by lot or election. For it is against all reason that those who claim to dispense justice to others should themselves have offences to answer for. On the contrary it is necessary that they should bear the impress of the operations of nature, as from an original design, and thus imitate them.
נ״ח
58[56] Consider the power exerted by fire and snow. Fire warms all it touches but its heat primarily resides in itself, snow its opposite through its own coldness chills other things. So too the judge must be permeated by pure justice if he is to foster with the water of justice those who will come before him, and thus as from a sweet fountain there may issue a stream fit to refresh the lips of those who thirst for true and lawful dealings.
נ״ט
59[57] And this will come to pass if a man when he enters upon his duties as judge considers that when he tries a case he is himself on his trial, and with his voting tablet takes also good sense to make him proof against deceit, justice to assign to each according to his deserts, courage to remain unmoved by supplication and lamentation over the punishments of the convicted.
ס׳
60[58] He who studies to possess these virtues will properly be considered a public benefactor. Like a good pilot he steers a prosperous voyage through the storms of business to secure the preservation and security of those who have entrusted their interests to him.
ס״א
61[59] The first instruction that the law gives to the judge is that he should not accept idle hearing. What is this? “Let your ears, my friend,” he says, “be purged” and purged they will be if streams of worthy thoughts and words are constantly poured into them and if they refuse to admit the long-winded expositions, the idle hackneyed absurdities of the makers of myths and farces and of vain inventions with their glorification of the worthless.
ס״ב
62[60] And the phrase “not accept idle hearing” has another signification consistent with that just mentioned. If men listen to hearsay given as evidence their listening will be idle and unsound. Why so? Because the eyes are conversant with the actual events; they are in a sense in contact with the facts and grasp them in their completeness through the co-operation of the light which reveals and tests everything. But ears, as one of the ancients has aptly said, are less trustworthy than eyes; they are not conversant with facts, but are distracted by words which interpret the facts but are not necessarily always veracious.
ס״ג
63[61] And therefore it seems that some Grecian legislators did well when they copied from the most sacred tables of Moses the enactment that hearing is not accepted as evidence, meaning that what a man has seen is to be judged trustworthy, but what he has heard is not entirely reliable.
ס״ד
64[62] The second instruction to the judge is not to take gifts, for gifts, says the law, blind the eyes which see and corrupt the things that are just, while they prevent the mind from pursuing its course straight along the high road.
ס״ה
65[63] And while receiving bribes to do injustice is the act of the utterly depraved, to receive them to do justice shows a half depravity. For there are some magistrates half way in wickedness, mixtures of justice and injustice, who having been appointed to the duty of supporting the wronged against the wrongdoers think themselves justified in refusing without a consideration to record a victory to the necessarily victorious party and so make their verdict a thing purchased and paid for.
ס״ו
66[64] Then when they are attacked they plead that they did not pervert justice, since those who ought to lose did lose and those who deserved to win were successful. This is a bad defence, for two things are demanded from the good judge, a verdict absolutely according to law and a refusal to be bribed. But the awarder of justice who has taken gifts for it has unconsciously disfigured what nature has made beautiful.
ס״ז
67[65] Apart from this he offends in two other ways; he is habituating himself to be covetous of money, and that vice is the source from which the greatest iniquities spring, and he is injuring one who deserves to be benefited when that person has to pay a price for justice.
ס״ח
68[66] And therefore Moses gives us a very instructive command, when he bids us pursue justice justly, implying that it is possible to do so unjustly. He refers to those who give a just award for lucre, not only in law courts but everywhere on land and sea and one may almost say in all the affairs of life.
ס״ט
69[67] Thus we have heard of a person accepting a deposit of little value and repaying it with a view to ensnare rather than to benefit the person to whom he gives it. His object was by baiting his hook with trustworthiness in small matters to secure trustfulness in greater things, and this is nothing else than executing justice unjustly, for while repayment of what is due to others is a just deed, it was not done justly being done in pursuit of further gains.
ע׳
70[68] Now the principal cause of such misdeeds is familiarity with falsehood which grows up with the children right from their birth and from the cradle, the work of nurses and mothers and the rest of the company, slaves and free, who belong to the household. By word and deed they are perpetually welding and uniting falsehood to the soul as though it were a necessary part inherent in its nature, though if nature had really made it congenital it ought to have been eradicated by habituation to things excellent.
ע״א
71[69] And what has life to show so excellent as truth, which the man of perfect wisdom set as a monument on the robe of the high priest in the most sacred place where the dominant part of the soul resides, when he wished to deck him with a sacred ornament of special beauty and magnificence? And beside truth he set a kindred quality which he called “clear showing,” the two representing both aspects of the reason we possess, the inward and the outward. For the outward requires clear showing by which the invisible thoughts in each of us are made known to our neighbours. The inward requires truth to bring to perfection the conduct of life and the actions by which the way to happiness is discovered.
ע״ב
72[70] A third instruction to the judge is that he should scrutinize the facts rather than the litigants and should try in every way to withdraw himself from the contemplation of those whom he is trying. He must force himself to ignore and forget those whom he has known and remembered, relations, friends and fellow citizens and on the other hand strangers, enemies, foreigners so that neither kind feeling nor hatred may becloud his decision of what is just. Otherwise he must stumble like a blind man proceeding without a staff or others to guide his feet on whom he can lean with security;
ע״ג
73[71] and therefore the good judge must draw a veil over the disputants, whoever they are, and keep in view the nature of the facts in their naked simplicity. He must come with the intention of judging according to truth and not according to the opinions of men, and with the thought before him that “judgement is God’s” and the judge is the steward of judgement. As a steward he is not permitted to give away his master’s goods, for the best of all things in human life is the trust he has received from the hands of One who is Himself the best of all.
ע״ד
74[72] He adds to those already mentioned another wise precept, not to show pity to the poor man in giving judgement. And this comes from one who has filled practically his whole legislation with injunctions to show pity and kindness, who issues severe threats against the haughty and arrogant and offers great rewards to those who feel it a duty to redress the misfortunes of their neighbours and to look upon abundant wealth not as their personal possession but as something to be shared by those who are in need.
ע״ה
75[73] For what one of the men of old aptly said is true, that in no other action does man so much resemble God as in showing kindness, and what greater good can there be than that they should imitate God, they the created Him the eternal?
ע״ו
76[74] So then let not the rich man collect great store of gold and silver and hoard it at his house, but bring it out for general use that he may soften the hard lot of the needy with the unction of his cheerfully given liberality. If he has high position, let him not show himself uplifted with boastful and insolent airs, but honour equality and allow a frank exchange of speech to those of low estate. If he possesses bodily vigour, let him be the support of the weaker and not as men do in athletic contest take every means of battering down the less powerful, but make it his ambition to share the advantage of his strength with those who have none of their own left to brace them.
ע״ז
77[75] All who have drawn water from wisdom’s wells banish a grudging spirit from the confines of the mind and needing no bidding save their own spontaneous instinct gird themselves up to benefit their neighbours and pour into their souls through the channel of their ears the wordstream which may make them partakers of their own knowledge. And when they see young people gifted by nature like fine thriving plants, they rejoice to think that they have found some to inherit the spiritual wealth which is the only true wealth. They take them in hand and till their souls with the husbandry of principles and doctrines until on their full grown stems they bear the fruit of noble living.
ע״ח
78[76] Such gems of varied beauty are interwoven in the laws, bidding us give wealth to the poor, and it is only on the judgement seat that we are forbidden to show them compassion. Compassion is for misfortunes, and he who acts wickedly of his own free will is not unfortunate but unjust.
ע״ט
79[77] Let punishment be meted to the unjust as surely as honours to the just. And therefore let no cowering, cringing rogue of a poor man evade his punishment by exciting pity for his penniless condition. His actions do not deserve compassion, far from it, but anger. And therefore one who undertakes to act as judge must be a good money changer, sifting with discrimination the nature of each of the facts before him, so that genuine and spurious may not be jumbled together in confusion.
פ׳
80[78] There is much else which might be said about false witnesses and judges, but to avoid prolixity we must proceed to the last of the ten Great Words. This, which like each of the rest was delivered in the form of a summary, is “Thou shalt not covet.”
פ״א
81[79] Every passion is blameworthy. This follows from the censure due to every “inordinate and excessive impulse” and to “irrational and unnatural movements” of the soul, for both these are nothing else than the opening out of a long-standing passion. So if a man does not set bounds to his impulses and bridle them like horses which defy the reins he is the victim of a wellnigh fatal passion, and that defiance will cause him to be carried away before he knows it like a driver borne by his team into ravines or impassable abysses whence it is hardly possible to escape.
פ״ב
82[80] But none of the passions is so troublesome as covetousness or desire of what we have not, things which seem good, though they are not truly good. Such desire breeds fierce and endless yearnings; it urges and drives the soul ever so far into the boundless distance while the object of the chase often flies insolently before it, with its face not its back turned to the pursuer.
פ״ג
83[81] For when it perceives the desire eagerly racing after it it stands still for a while to entice it and provide a hope of its capture, then it is off and away, mocking and railing as the interval between them grows longer and longer. Meanwhile the desire outdistanced and losing ground is in sore distress and inflicts on the wretched soul the punishment of Tantalus, who, as the story goes, when he would get him something to drink could not because the water slipt away, and when he wished to pluck fruit it all vanished and the rich produce of the trees was turned into barrenness.
פ״ד
84[82] For just as those unmerciful and relentless mistresses of the body, hunger and thirst, rack it with pains as great as, or greater than, those of the sufferers on the tormentor’s wheel, and often bring it to the point of death unless their savagery is assuaged by food and drink, so it is with the soul. Desire makes it empty through oblivion of what is present, and then through memory of what is far away it produces fierce and uncontrollable madness, and thus creates mistresses harsher than those just mentioned though bearing the same name, hunger and thirst, in this case, not for what gives gratification to the belly, but for money, reputation, government, beautiful women and all the innumerable objects which are held in human life to be enviable and worthy of a struggle.
פ״ה
85[83] And just as the creeping sickness, as physicians call it, does not stand still in one place but moves about and courses round and round and justifies its name by creeping about, spreading in all directions, and gripping and seizing all parts of the body’s system from the crown of the head to the sole of the feet, so does desire dart through the whole soul and leave not the smallest bit of it uninjured. In this it imitates the force of fire working on an abundance of fuel which it kindles into a blaze and devours until it has utterly consumed it.
פ״ו
86[84] So great then and transcendent an evil is desire, or rather it may be truly said, the fountain of all evils. For plunderings and robberies and repudiations of debts and false accusations and outrages, also seductions, adulteries, murders and all wrongful actions, whether private or public, whether in things sacred or things profane,
פ״ז
87[85] from what other source do they flow? For the passion to which the name of originator of evil can truly be given is desire, of which one and that the smallest fruit the passion of love has not only once but often in the past filled the whole world with countless calamities, which, too numerous to be contained by the whole compass of the land, have consequently poured into the sea as though driven by a torrent, and everywhere the wide waters have been filled with hostile ships and all the fresh terrors created by maritime war have come into being, then fallen with all their mass on islands and continents, swept along backwards and forwards from their original home as in the ebb and flow of the tides.
פ״ח
88[86] But we shall gain a clearer insight into the passion in the following way. Desire, like venomous animals or deadly poisons, produces a change for the worse in all which it attacks. What do I mean by this?
פ״ט
89[87] If the desire is directed to money it makes men thieves and cut-purses, footpads, burglars, guilty of defaulting to their creditors, repudiating deposits, receiving bribes, robbing temples and of all similar actions.
צ׳
90[88] If its aim is reputation they become arrogant, haughty, inconstant and unstable in temperament, their ears blockaded by the voices they hear, deaf to all else, at once humbled to the ground and uplifted on high by the inconsistencies of the multitude who deal out praise and blame in an indiscriminate stream. They form friendships and enmities recklessly so that they easily change each for the other, and show every other quality of the same family and kinship as these.
צ״א
91[89] If the desire is directed to office, they are factious, inequitable, tyrannical in nature, cruel-hearted, foes of their country, merciless masters to those who are weaker, irreconcilable enemies of their equals in strength and flatterers of their superiors in power as a preparation for their treacherous attack.
צ״ב
92If the object is bodily beauty they are seducers, adulterers, pederasts, cultivators of incontinence and lewdness, as though these worst of evils were the best of blessings.
צ״ג
93[90] We have known desire to make its way to the tongue and cause an infinity of troubles, for some desire to keep unspoken what should be told or to tell what should be left unsaid, and avenging justice attends on utterance in the one case and silence in the opposite.
צ״ד
94[91] And when it takes hold of the region of the belly, it produces gourmands, insatiable, debauched, eagerly pursuing a loose and dissolute life, delighting in wine bibbing and gluttonous feeding, base slaves to strong drink and fish and dainty cates, sneaking like greedy little dogs round banqueting halls and tables, all this finally resulting in an unhappy and accursed life which is more painful than any death.
צ״ה
95[92] It was this which led those who had taken no mere sip of philosophy but had feasted abundantly on its sound doctrines to the theory which they laid down. They had made researches into the nature of the soul and observed that its components were threefold, reason, high spirit and desire. To reason as sovereign they assigned for its citadel the head as its most suitable residence, where also are set the stations of the senses like bodyguards to their king, the mind.
צ״ו
96[93] To the spirited part they gave the chest, partly that soldier-like clad with a breast-plate it would if not altogether scatheless be scarcely vanquished finally; partly that lying close to the mind it should be helped by its neighbour who would use good sense to charm it into gentleness. But to desire they gave the space round the navel and what is called the diaphragm.
צ״ז
97[94] For it was right that desire so lacking in reasoning power should be lodged as far as might be from reason’s royal seat, almost at the outermost boundary, and that being above all others an animal insatiable and incontinent it should be pastured in the region where food-taking and copulation dwell.
צ״ח
98[95] All these it seems the most holy Moses observed and therefore discarded passion in general and detesting it, as most vile in itself and in its effects, denounced especially desire as a battery of destruction to the soul, which must be done away with or brought into obedience to the governance of reason, and then all things will be permeated through and through with peace and good order, those perfect forms of the good which bring the full perfection of happy living.
צ״ט
99[96] And being a lover of conciseness and wont to abridge subjects of unlimited number by using an example as a lesson he takes one form of desire, that one whose field of activity is the belly, and admonishes and disciplines it as the first step, holding that the other forms will cease to run riot as before and will be restrained by having learnt that their senior and as it were the leader of their company is obedient to the laws of temperance.
ק׳
100[97] What then is the lesson which he takes as his first step? Two things stand out in importance, food and drink; to neither of these did he give full liberty but bridled them with ordinances most conducive to self-restraint and humanity and what is chief of all, piety.
ק״א
101[98] For he bids them to take samples of their corn, wine, oil and live-stock and the rest as first fruits, and apportion them for sacrifices and for gifts to the officiating priests: for sacrifices, to give thanks for the fertility of their flocks and fields; to the priests, in recognition of the ministry of the temple that they may receive a reward for their services in the holy rites.
ק״ב
102[99] No one is permitted in any way to taste or take any part of his fruits until he has set apart the first fruits, a rule which also serves to give practice in the self-restraint which is most profitable to life. For he who has learnt not to rush to seize the abundant gifts which the seasons of the year have brought, but waits till the first fruits have been consecrated, clearly allays passion and thus curbs the restiveness of the appetites.
ק״ג
103[100] At the same time he also denied to the members of the sacred Commonwealth unrestricted liberty to use and partake of the other kinds of food. All the animals of land, sea or air whose flesh is the finest and fattest, thus titillating and exciting the malignant foe pleasure, he sternly forbade them to eat, knowing that they set a trap for the most slavish of the senses, the taste, and produce gluttony, an evil very dangerous both to soul and body. For gluttony begets indigestion which is the source and origin of all distempers and infirmities.
ק״ד
104[101] Now among the different kinds of land animals there is none whose flesh is so delicious as the pig’s, as all who eat it agree, and among the aquatic animals the same may be said of such species as are scaleless. … Having special gifts for inciting to self-control those who have a natural tendency to virtue, he trains and drills them by frugality and simple contentedness and endeavours to get rid of extravagance.
ק״ה
105[102] He approved neither of rigorous austerity like the Spartan legislator, nor of dainty living, like him who introduced the Ionians and Sybarites to luxurious and voluptuous practices. Instead he opened up a path midway between the two. He relaxed the overstrained and tightened the lax, and as on an instrument of music blended the very high and the very low at each end of the scale with the middle chord, thus producing a life of harmony and concord which none can blame. Consequently he neglected nothing, but drew up very careful rules as to what they should or should not take as food.
ק״ו
106[103] Possibly it might be thought just that all wild beasts that feed on human flesh should suffer from men what men have suffered from them. But Moses would have us abstain from the enjoyment of such, even though they provide a very appetizing and delectable repast. He was considering what is suitable to a gentle-mannered soul, for though it is fitting enough that one should suffer for what one has done, it is not fitting conduct for the sufferers to retaliate it on the wrongdoers, lest the savage passion of anger should turn them unawares into beasts.
ק״ז
107[104] So careful is he against this danger that wishing to restrain by implication the appetite for the food just mentioned, he also strictly forbade them to eat the other carnivorous animals. He distinguished between them and the graminivorous which he grouped with the gentle kind since indeed they are naturally tame and live on the gentle fruits which the earth produces and do nothing by way of attempting the life of others.
ק״ח
108[105] They are the calf, the lamb, the kid, the hart, the gazelle, the buffalo, the wild goat, the pygarg, the antelope, and the giraffe, ten in all. For as he always adhered to the principles of numerical science, which he knew by close observance to be a paramount factor in all that exists, he never enacted any law great or small without calling to his aid and as it were accommodating to his enactment its appropriate number. But of all the numbers from the unit upwards ten is the most perfect, and, as Moses says, most holy and sacred, and with this he seals his list of the clean kinds of animals when he wishes to appoint them for the use of the members of his commonwealth.
ק״ט
109[106] He adds a general method for proving and testing the ten kinds, based on two signs, the parted hoof and the chewing of the cud. Any kind which lacks both or one of these is unclean. Now both these two are symbols to teacher and learner of the method best suited for acquiring knowledge, the method by which the better is distinguished from the worse, and thus confusion is avoided.
ק״י
110[107] For just as a cud-chewing animal after biting through the food keeps it at rest in the gullet, again after a bit draws it up and masticates it and then passes it on to the belly, so the pupil after receiving from the teacher through his ears the principles and lore of wisdom prolongs the process of learning, as he cannot at once apprehend and grasp them securely, till by using memory to call up each thing that he has heard by constant exercises which act as the cement of conceptions, he stamps a firm impression of them on his soul.
קי״א
111[108] But the firm apprehension of conceptions is clearly useless unless we discriminate and distinguish them so that we can choose what we should choose and avoid the contrary, and this distinguishing is symbolized by the parted hoof. For the way of life is twofold, one branch leading to vice, the other to virtue and we must turn away from the one and never forsake the other.
קי״ב
112[109] Therefore all creatures whose hooves are uniform or multiform are unclean, the one because they signify the idea that good and bad have one and the same nature, which is like confusing concave and convex or uphill and downhill in a road; the multiform because they set before our life many roads, which are rather no roads, to cheat us, for where there is a multitude to choose from it is not easy to find the best and most serviceable path.
קי״ג
113[110] After laying down these limitations for the land animals he proceeds to describe such creatures of the water as are clean for eating. These too he indicates by two distinguishing marks, fins and scales; all that lack either or both he dismisses and repudiates. I must state the reason for this which is appropriate enough.
קי״ד
114[111] Any that fail to possess both or one of these marks are swept away by the current unable to resist the force of the stream; those who possess both throw it aside, front and stem it and pertinaciously exercise themselves against the antagonist with an invincible ardour and audacity. When they are pushed they push back, when pursued they hasten to assail, where their passage is hampered they open up broad roads and obtain easy thoroughfares.
קי״ה
115[112] These two kinds of fish are symbolical, the first of a pleasure-loving soul, the latter of one to which endurance and self-control are dear. For the road that leads to pleasure is downhill and very easy, with the result that one does not walk but is dragged along; the other which leads to self-control is uphill, toil-some no doubt but profitable exceedingly. The one carries us away, forced lower and lower as it drives us down its steep incline, till it flings us off on to the level ground at its foot; the other leads heavenwards the immortal who have not fainted on the way and have had the strength to endure the roughness of the hard ascent.
קי״ו
116[113] Holding to the same method he declares that all reptiles which have not feet but wriggle along by trailing their belly, or are four-legged and many footed are unclean for eating. Here again he has a further meaning: by the reptiles he signifies persons who devote themselves to their bellies and fill themselves like a cormorant, paying to the miserable stomach constant tributes of strong drink, bake-meats, fishes and in general all the delicacies produced with every kind of viand by the elaborate skill of cooks and confectioners, thereby fanning and fostering the flame of the insatiable ever-greedy desires. By the four-legged and many footed he means the base slaves not of one passion only, desire, but of all. For the passions fall under four main heads but have a multitude of species, and while the tyranny of one is cruel the tyranny of many cannot but be most harsh and intolerable.
קי״ז
117[114] Creeping things which have legs above their feet, so that they can leap from the ground, he classes among the clean as for instance the different kinds of grasshoppers and the snake-fighter as it is called; and here again by symbols he searches into the temperaments and ways of a reasonable soul. For the natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them with the multitude of the fleshly elements.
קי״ח
118[115] Blessed are they to whom it is given to resist with superior strength the weight that would pull them down, taught by the guiding lines of right instruction to leap upward from earth and earth-bound things into the ether and the revolving heavens, that sight so much desired, so worthy a prize in the eyes of those who come to it with a will and not half-heartedly.
קי״ט
119[116] Having discoursed on the subject of the different kinds of animals on land and in the water and laid down the best possible laws for distinguishing between them, he proceeds to examine also the remaining parts of the animal creation, the inhabitants of the air. Of these he disqualified a vast number of kinds, in fact all that prey on other fowls or on men, creatures which are carnivorous and venomous and in general use their strength to attack others.
ק״כ
120[117] But doves, pigeons, turtledoves, and the tribes of cranes, geese and the like he reckons as belonging to the tame and gentle class and gives to any who wish full liberty to make use of them as food.
קכ״א
121[118] Thus in each element of the universe, earth, water, air he withdrew from our use various kinds of each sort, land creatures, water creatures, flying fowls, and by this as by the withdrawal of fuel from a fire he creates an extinguisher to desire.
קכ״ב
122[119] Further he forbade them to have anything to do with bodies of animals that have died of themselves or have been torn by wild beasts, the latter because a man ought not to be table mate with savage brutes and one might almost say share with them the enjoyment of their feasts of flesh; the former perhaps because it is a noxious and insanitary practice since the body contains dead serum as well as blood; also it may be because the fitness of things bids us keep untouched what we find deceased, and respect the fate which the compulsion of nature has already imposed.
קכ״ג
123[120] Skilful hunters who know how to hit their quarry with an aim that rarely misses the mark and preen themselves on their success in this sport, particularly when they share the pieces of their prey with the other huntsmen as well as with the hounds, are extolled by most legislators among Greeks and Barbarians, not only for their courage, but also for their liberality. But the author of the holy commonwealth might rightly blame them since for the reasons stated he definitely forbade the enjoyment of bodies which died a natural death or were torn by wild beasts.
קכ״ד
124[121] If anyone of the devotees of hard training who is a lover of gymnastic exercises becomes a lover of the chase also, because he considers that it gives a preliminary practice for war and for the dangers incurred in facing the enemy, he should when he meets with success in the chase throw the fallen beasts to feast the hounds as a wage or prize for their courage and faithful assistance. He himself should not touch these carcases, thus learning from his dealing with irrational animals what he should feel with regard to human enemies, who should be combated not for wrongful gain as foot-pads do, but in self-defence, either to avenge the injuries which he has suffered already or to guard against those which he expects to suffer in the future.
קכ״ה
125[122] But some of the type of Sardanapalus greedily extend their unrestrained and excessive luxury beyond all bounds and limits. They devise novel kinds of pleasure and prepare meat unfit for the altar by strangling and throttling the animals, and entomb in the carcase the blood which is the essence of the soul and should be allowed to run freely away. For they should be fully contented with enjoying the flesh only and not lay hold on what is akin to the soul;
קכ״ו
126[123] and therefore elsewhere he legislates on the subject of blood that no one should put either it or the fat to his mouth. Blood is prohibited for the reason which I have mentioned that it is the essence of the soul, not of the intelligent and reasonable soul, but of that which operates through the senses, the soul that gives the life which we and the irrational animals possess in common.
קכ״ז
127For the essence or substance of that other soul is divine spirit, a truth vouched for by Moses especially, who in his story of the creation says that God breathed a breath of life upon the first man, the founder of our race, into the lordliest part of his body, the face, where the senses are stationed like bodyguards to the great king, the mind. And clearly what was then thus breathed was ethereal spirit, or something if such there be better than ethereal spirit, even an effulgence of the blessed, thrice blessed nature of the Godhead.
קכ״ח
128[124] The fat is prohibited because it is the richest part and here again he teaches us to practise self-restraint and foster the aspiration for the life of austerity which relinquishes what is easiest and lies ready to hand, but willingly endures anxiety and toils in order to acquire virtue.
קכ״ט
129[125] It is for this reason that with every victim these two, the blood and the fat, are set apart as a sort of first fruits and consumed in their entirety. The blood is poured upon the altar as a libation, the fat because of its richness serves as fuel in place of oil and is carried to the holy and consecrated fire.
ק״ל
130[126] Moses censures some of his own day as gluttons who suppose that wanton self-indulgence is the height of happiness, who not contented to confine luxurious living to cities where their requirements would be unstintedly supplied and catered for, demanded the same in wild and trackless deserts and expected to have fish, flesh and all the accompaniments of plenty exposed there for sale.
קל״א
131[127] Then, when there was a scarcity, they joined together to accuse and reproach and brow-beat their ruler with shameless effrontery and did not cease from giving trouble until their desire was granted though it was to their undoing. It was granted for two reasons, first to show that all things are possible to God who finds a way out of impassable difficulties, secondly to punish those who let their belly go uncontrolled and rebelled against holiness.
קל״ב
132[128] Rising up from the sea in the early dawn there poured forth a cloud of quails whereby the camp and its environs were all round on every side darkened for a distance which an active man might cover in a day, while the height of their flight might be reckoned at about two cubits above the ground so as to make them easy to capture.
קל״ג
133[129] It might have been expected that awestruck by the marvel of this mighty work they would have been satisfied with this spectacle, and filled with piety and having it for their sustenance, would have abstained from fleshly food. Instead they spurred on their lusts more than before and hastened to grasp what seemed so great a boon. With both hands they pulled in the creatures and filled their laps with them, then put them away in their tents, and, since excessive avidity knows no bounds, went out to catch others, and after dressing them in any way they could devoured them greedily, doomed in their senselessness to be destroyed by the surfeit.
קל״ד
134[130] Indeed they shortly perished through discharges of bile, so that the place also received its name from the disaster which befell them, for it was called “Monuments of Lust”—lust than which no greater evil can exist in the soul as the story shows.
קל״ה
135[131] And therefore most excellent are these words of Moses in his Exhortations, “Each man shall not do what is pleasing in his own sight,” which is as much as to say “let no one indulge his own lust. Let a man be well pleasing to God, to the universe, to nature, to laws, to wise men and discard self love. So only will he attain true excellence.”
קל״ו
136[132] In these remarks we have discussed the matters relating to desire or lust as adequately as our abilities allow, and thus completed our survey of the ten oracles, and the laws which are dependent on them. For if we are right in describing the main heads delivered by the voice of God as generic laws, and all particular laws of which Moses was the spokesman as dependent species, for accurate apprehension free from confusion scientific study was needed, with the aid of which I have assigned and attached to each of the heads what was appropriate to them throughout the whole legislation.
קל״ז
137Enough then of this.
קל״ח
138[133] But we must not fail to know that, just as each of the ten separately has some particular laws akin to it having nothing in common with any other, there are some things common to all which fit in not with some particular number such as one or two but with all the ten Great Words.
קל״ט
139[134] These are the virtues of universal value. For each of the ten pronouncements separately and all in common incite and exhort us to wisdom and justice and godliness and the rest of the company of virtues, with good thoughts and intentions combining wholesome words, and with words actions of true worth, that so the soul with every part of its being attuned may be an instrument making harmonious music so that life becomes a melody and a concent in which there is no faulty note.
ק״מ
140[135] Of the queen of the virtues, piety or holiness, we have spoken earlier and also of wisdom and temperance. Our theme must now be she whose ways are close akin to them, that is justice.
קמ״א
141[136] One and by no means an inconsiderable part of justice is that which is concerned with law courts and judges. This I have already mentioned, when I dealt at length with the question of testimony in order to omit nothing of the points involved. As it is not my custom to repeat myself unless forced to do so by the pressure of the particular occasion I will say no more about it and with only so much preface address myself to the other parts of the subject.
קמ״ב
142[137] The law tells us that we must set the rules of justice in the heart and fasten them for a sign upon the hand and have them shaking before the eyes. The first of these is a parable indicating that the rules of justice must not be committed to untrustworthy ears since no trust can be placed in the sense of hearing but that these best of all lessons must be impressed upon our lordliest part, stamped too with genuine seals.
קמ״ג
143[138] The second shows that we must not only receive conceptions of the good but express our approval of them in unhesitating action, for the hand is the symbol of action, and on this the law bids us fasten and hang the rules of justice for a sign. Of what it is a sign he has not definitely stated because, I believe, they are a sign not of one thing but of many, practically of all the factors in human life.
קמ״ד
144[139] The third means that always and everywhere we must have the vision of them as it were close to our eyes. And they must have vibration and movement, it continues, not to make them unstable and unsettled, but that by their motion they may provoke the sight to gain a clear discernment of them. For motion induces the use of the faculty of sight by stimulating and arousing the eyes, or rather by making them unsleepful and wakeful.
קמ״ה
145[140] He to whom it is given to set their image in the eye of the soul, not at rest but in motion and engaged in their natural activities, must be placed on record as a perfect man. No longer must he be ranked among the disciples and pupils but among the teachers and instructors, and he should provide as from a fountain to the young who are willing to draw therefrom a plenteous stream of discourses and doctrines. And if some less courageous spirit hesitates through modesty and is slow to come near to learn, that teacher should go himself and pour into his ears as into a conduit a continuous flood of instruction until the cisterns of the soul are filled.
קמ״ו
146[141] Indeed he must be forward to teach the principles of justice to kinsfolk and friends and all the young people at home and in the street, both when they go to their beds and when they arise, so that in every posture and every motion, in every place both private and public, not only when they are awake but when they are asleep, they may be gladdened by visions of the just. For there is no sweeter delight than that the soul should be charged through and through with justice, exercising itself in her eternal principles and doctrines and leaving no vacant place into which unjustice can make its way.
קמ״ז
147[142] He bids them also write and set them forth in front of the door posts of each house and the gates in their walls, so that those who leave or remain at home, citizens and strangers alike, may read the inscriptions engraved on the face of the gates and keep in perpetual memory what they should say and do, careful alike to do and to allow no injustice, and when they enter their houses and again when they go forth men and women and children and servants alike may act as is due and fitting both for others and for themselves.
קמ״ח
148[143] Another most admirable injunction is that nothing should be added or taken away, but all the laws originally ordained should be kept unaltered just as they were. For what actually happens, as we clearly see, is that it is the unjust which is added and the just which is taken away, for the wise legislator has omitted nothing which can give possession of justice whole and complete.
קמ״ט
149[144] Further he suggests also that the summit of perfection has been reached in each of the other virtues. For each of them is defective in nothing, complete in its self-wrought consummateness, so that if there be any adding or taking away, its whole being is changed and transformed into the opposite condition.
ק״נ
150[145] Here is an example of what I mean. That courage, the virtue whose field of action is what causes terror, is the knowledge of what ought to be endured, is known to all who are not completely devoid of learning and culture, even if their contact with education has been but small.
קנ״א
151[146] But if anyone, indulging the ignorance which comes from arrogance and believing himself to be a superior person capable of correcting what stands in no such need, ventures to add to or take from courage, he changes its likeness altogether and stamps upon it a form in which ugliness replaces beauty, for by adding he will make rashness and by taking away he will make cowardice, not leaving even the name of the courage so highly profitable to life.
קנ״ב
152[147] In the same way too if one adds anything small or great to the queen of virtues piety or on the other hand takes something from it, in either case he will change and transform its nature. Addition will beget superstition and subtraction will beget impiety, and so piety too is lost to sight, that sun whose rising and shining is a blessing we may well pray for, because it is the source of the greatest of blessings, since it gives the knowledge of the service of God, which we must hold as lordlier than any lordship, more royal than any sovereignty.
קנ״ג
153[148] Much the same may be said of the other virtues, but as it is my habit to avoid lengthy discussions by abridgement I will content myself with the aforesaid examples which will sufficiently indicate what is left unsaid.
קנ״ד
154[149] Another commandment of general value is “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s landmarks which thy forerunners have set up.” Now this law, we may consider, applies not merely to allotments and boundaries of land in order to eliminate covetousness but also to the safeguarding of ancient customs. For customs are unwritten laws, the decisions approved by men of old, not inscribed on monuments nor on leaves of paper which the moth destroys, but on the souls of those who are partners in the same citizenship.
קנ״ה
155[150] For children ought to inherit from their parents, besides their property, ancestral customs which they were reared in and have lived with even from the cradle, and not despise them because they have been handed down without written record. Praise cannot be duly given to one who obeys the written laws, since he acts under the admonition of restraint and the fear of punishment. But he who faithfully observes the unwritten deserves commendation, since the virtue which he displays is freely willed.
קנ״ו
156[151] Some legislators have introduced the system of filling magistracies by lot, to the detriment of their peoples, for the lot shows good luck, not merit. In fact the lot often falls to many of the unworthy whom a good man, if he obtained command, would reject as unfit to be classed even among his subjects.
קנ״ז
157[152] For those “minor rulers,” as some phrase it, whom we call “masters” do not retain in their service all they might whether home-bred or purchased, but only those who prove amenable: the incorrigible they sometimes sell in a mass as unworthy to be slaves of men of merit.
קנ״ח
158[153] And can it then be right to make masters and rulers of whole cities and nations out of persons chosen by lot, by what we may call a blunder of fortune, the uncertain and unstable? In the matter of tending the sick lot has no place, for physicians do not gain their posts by lot, but are approved by the test of experience.
קנ״ט
159[154] And to secure a successful voyage and the safety of travellers on the sea we do not choose by lot and send straight away to the helm a steersman who through his ignorance will produce in fine weather and calm water shipwrecks in which Nature has no part. Instead we send one whom we know to have been carefully trained from his earliest years in the art of steersmanship. Such a one will have made many a voyage, crossed all or most seas, carefully studied the trading ports, harbours and anchorages and roadsteads, both in the islands and the mainland, and know the sea routes as well as, if not better than, the roads on land, through accurately watching the heavenly bodies.
ק״ס
160[155] For by observing the courses of the stars and following their ordered movements he has been able to open up in the pathless waste high-roads where none can err, with this incredible result, that the creature whose element is land can float his way through the element of water.
קס״א
161[156] And shall one who is to have in his hands great and populous cities with all their inhabitants, and the constitutions of the cities and the management of matters private, public and sacred, a task which we might well call an art of arts and a science of sciences, be the sport of the unstable oscillation of the lot and escape the strict test of truth, which can only be tested by proofs founded on reason?
קס״ב
162[157] These things Moses, wise here as ever, considered in his soul and does not even mention appointment of rulers by lot, but determines to institute appointment by election. Thus he says “thou shalt establish a ruler over thyself, not a foreigner but from thy brethren,” hereby indicating that there should be a free choice and an unimpeachable scrutiny of the ruler made by the whole people with the same mind. And the choice will receive the further vote and seal of ratification from Him who confirms all things that promote the common weal, even God who holds that the man may be called the chosen from the race, in which he is what the eye is in the body.
קס״ג
163[158] The reasons subjoined to show why a foreigner should not be selected are two. First to prevent him from amassing a great quantity of gold and silver and cattle and storing up great wealth all unjustly wrung from the poverty of his subjects. Secondly that he should not to gratify his own greedy desires evict the natives from the land and compel them to emigrate borne hither and thither in endless wandering, or by inspiring in them futile hopes of increased prosperity succeed in taking from them what ere now they enjoyed in security.
קס״ד
164[159] For he assumed with good reason that one who was their fellow-tribesman and fellow-kinsman related to them by the tie which brings the highest kinship, the kinship of having one citizenship and the same law and one God who has taken all members of the nation for His portion, would never sin in the way just mentioned. He knew that such a one on the contrary, instead of sending the inhabitants adrift, would provide a safe return for those who are scattered on foreign soil, and instead of taking the wealth of others would give liberally to the needy by making his private substance common to all.
קס״ה
165[160] From the day that he enters upon his office the lawgiver bids him write out with his own hand this sequel to the laws which embraces them all in the form of a summary. He wishes hereby to have the ordinance cemented to the soul. For the thoughts swept away by the current ebb away from the mere reader, but are implanted and set fast in one who writes them out at leisure. For the mind can dwell at its ease on each point and fix itself upon it, and does not pass on to something else until it has securely grasped what goes before.
קס״ו
166[161] Still after writing he must endeavour every day to read and familiarize himself with what he has written, so that he may have a constant and unbroken memory of ordinances so good and profitable to all, and thus conceive an unswerving love and yearning for them by perpetually training and habituating his soul to companionship with holy laws. For prolonged associations produce a pure and sincere affection not only for men but for writings of such kinds as are worthy of our love.
קס״ז
167[162] And this will be the case if the ruler studies not the writings and notes of another but the work of his own pen, for everyone is more familiar with his own writing and takes in its meaning more readily.
קס״ח
168[163] Further when he reads he will reason thus with himself. “I have written these words, I, a ruler of such eminence, without employing another though I have a host of servants. Have I done it to fill the pages of a book like those who write for hire or to train their eyes and hands, the first to sharpen the sight, the second to make themselves swift writers? No, surely not. I write them in a book in order to rewrite them straightway in my soul, and receive in my mind the imprints of a script more divine and ineffaceable.
קס״ט
169[164] Now other kings carry rods in their hands as sceptres but my sceptre is the book of the Sequel to the law, my pride and my glory, which nothing can rival, an ensign of sovereignty which none can impeach, formed in the image of its archetype the kingship of God.
ק״ע
170[165] And if I ever keep the holy laws for my staff and support I shall win two things better than all else. One is the spirit of equality, and no greater good can be found than this, for arrogance and insolence belong to a soul of mean capacity which does not foresee the future. Equality will earn its just reward,
קע״א
171[166] repaid in the goodwill and safety of my subjects, while inequality will create the gravest perils and pitfalls. These I shall escape if I hate inequality, the bestower of darkness and wars, while I shall have a life proof against the malice of enemies if I honour equality who eschews sedition and is the mother of light and settled order.
קע״ב
172[167] The other thing that I shall win is that I shall not sway to either side as on a balance, deflecting the ordinances and turning them awry, but I shall try to take them along the central highway marching with firm straightforward steps to ensure a life that never stumbles.”
קע״ג
173[168] Now the name of “royal” which Moses is wont to give to the central road which lies midway between excess and deficiency, is also given because in a set of three the midmost holds the leading place, joining in union with itself by an indissoluble bond those on either side of it, which also serve as bodyguards to it as to a king.
קע״ד
174[169] A law-abiding ruler who honours equality, who is impervious to bribes and gives just judgements justly and ever exercises himself in the laws has, he tells us, for his reward that the days of his government shall be long, not meaning that he grants him long years of life spent in presiding over the State, but to teach the ignorant that the law-abiding ruler, even when deceased, lives an age-long life through the actions which he leaves behind him never to die, monuments of high excellence which can never be destroyed.
קע״ה
175[170] The person who has been judged worthy to fill the highest and most important office should choose lieutenants to share with him the duties of governing, giving judgement, and managing all the other matters which concern the public welfare. For a single person even though possessed of unique strength both in body and soul would not be capable of coping with the magnitude and multitude of affairs, be he ever so zealous, but would collapse under their force as they pour in upon him daily from different sides, unless he had helpers all of the best chosen for their good sense, ability, justice and godliness, and because they not only keep clear of arrogance but hate it as a thing pernicious and utterly evil.
קע״ו
176[171] In such persons the man of high excellence burdened with state affairs will find assistants and supporters well fitted to join in relieving him and to lighten his task. Further, since the questions which arise are sometimes greater and sometimes less, to prevent his wearing himself out in petty matters he will do rightly in entrusting the smaller to his subordinates, while the greater he will be bound to scrutinize himself with the utmost care.
קע״ז
177[172] And great questions must not be understood, as some think, to mean cases where both the disputants are distinguished or rich or men in high office but rather where the commoner or the poor or the obscure are disputing with others more powerful, and where their one hope of escaping a fatal disaster lies in the judge.
קע״ח
178[173] Both these statements may be justified by clear examples to be found in the sacred laws, examples which we do well to copy. For there was a time when Moses himself arbitrated questions of justice, labouring from morning till night, but afterwards when his father-in-law arrived and observed the vast burden of affairs which oppressed him through the perpetual flood of persons who had questions to settle, he gave the excellent advice that Moses should choose delegates to judge the smaller matters and keep himself in reserve for the greater and thus allow himself time to rest.
קע״ט
179[174] Moses listened to this truly valuable advice and chose out of the multitude the men of highest repute whom he appointed as subordinate governors and also as judges, bidding them refer the more important suits to himself.
ק״פ
180[175] A record of the course thus taken is included in the sacred books as a lesson to each generation of rulers, first that they should not, under the impression that they are capable of surveying everything, reject the help of councillors which Moses the supremely wise and beloved of God did not reject; next that they should choose officers to act as second and third to themselves and so take care that they did not by wearing themselves out over petty matters neglect the more vital. For human nature cannot possibly reach everything.
קפ״א
181[176] I have stated one of the two examples and must add the evidence for the second. I said that the great cases were those of the lowlier. Lowliness and weakness are attributes of the widow, the orphan and the incomer. It is to these that the supreme king who is invested with the government of all should administer justice, because according to Moses God also the ruler of the Universe has not spurned them from His jurisdiction.
קפ״ב
182[177] For when the Revealer has hymned the excellences of the Self-existent in this manner “God the great and powerful, who has no respect to persons, will receive no gifts and executes judgement,” he proceeds to say for whom the judgement is executed—not for satraps and despots and men invested with power by land and sea, but for the “incomer, for orphan and widow.”
קפ״ג
183[178] For the incomer, because he has turned his kinsfolk, who in the ordinary course of things would be his sole confederates, into mortal enemies, by coming as a pilgrim to truth and the honouring of One who alone is worthy of honour, and by leaving the mythical fables and multiplicity of sovereigns, so highly honoured by the parents and grand-parents and ancestors and blood relations of this immigrant to a better home.
קפ״ד
184For the orphan, because he has been bereft of his father and mother his natural helpers and champions, deserted by the sole force which was bound to take up his cause. For the widow because she has been deprived of her husband who took over from the parents the charge of guarding and watching over her, since for the purpose of giving protection the husband is to the wife what the parents are to the maiden.
קפ״ה
185[179] One may say that the whole Jewish race is in the position of an orphan compared with all the nations on every side. They when misfortunes fall upon them which are not by the direct intervention of heaven are never, owing to international intercourse, unprovided with helpers who join sides with them. But the Jewish nation has none to take its part, as it lives under exceptional laws which are necessarily grave and severe, because they inculcate the highest standard of virtue. But gravity is austere, and austerity is held in aversion by the great mass of men because they favour pleasure.
קפ״ו
186[180] Nevertheless as Moses tells us the orphan-like desolate state of his people is always an object of pity and compassion to the Ruler of the Universe whose portion it is, because it has been set apart out of the whole human race as a kind of first fruits to the Maker and Father.
קפ״ז
187[181] And the cause of this was the precious signs of righteousness and virtue shown by the founders of the race, signs which survive like imperishable plants, bearing fruit that never decays for their descendants, fruit salutary and profitable in every way, even though these descendants themselves be sinners, so long as the sins be curable and not altogether unto death.
קפ״ח
188[182] Yet let no one think that good lineage is a perfect blessing and then neglect noble actions, but reflect that greater anger is due to one who while his parentage is of the best brings shame upon his parents by the wickedness of his ways. Guilty is he who, having for his own models of true excellence to copy, reproduces nothing that serves to direct his life aright and keep it sound and healthy.
קפ״ט
189[183] The law lays upon anyone who has undertaken to superintend and preside over public affairs a very just prohibition when it forbids him “to walk with fraud among the people,” for such conduct shows an illiberal and thoroughly slavish soul which disguises its malignant ways with hypocrisy.
ק״צ
190[184] The ruler should preside over his subjects as a father over his children so that he himself may be honoured in return as by true-born sons, and therefore good rulers may be truly called the parents of states and nations in common, since they show a fatherly and sometimes more than fatherly affection.
קצ״א
191[185] But those who assume great power to destroy and injure their subjects should be called not rulers but enemies acting like foemen in bitter war, though indeed those who do wrong craftily are more wicked than open adversaries. These last show their hostility stripped naked and it is easy to make defence against them; the villainy of the others is hard to catch or trace since they assume a strange garb as in a theatre to hide their true appearance.
קצ״ב
192[186] Now “rule” or “command” is a category which extends and intrudes itself, I might almost say, into every branch of life, differing only in magnitude and amount. For the relation of a king to a state is the same as that of a headman to a village, of a householder to a house, of a physician to his patients, of a general to an army, of an admiral to the marines and crews, or again of a skipper to merchant and cargo vessels or of a pilot to the seamen. All these have power both for good and for worse, but they ought to will the better, and the better is to benefit instead of injuring as many as they possibly can.
קצ״ג
193[187] For this is to follow God since He too can do both but wills the good only. This was shown both in the creation and in the ordering of the world. He called the non-existent into existence and produced order from disorder, qualities from things devoid of quality, similarities from dissimilars, identities from the totally different, fellowship and harmony from the dissociated and discordant, equality from inequality and light from darkness. For He and His beneficent powers ever make it their business to transmute the faultiness of the worse wherever it exists and convert it to the better.
קצ״ד
194[188] These things good rulers must imitate if they have any aspiration to be assimilated to God.
קצ״ה
195But since a vast number of circumstances slip away from or are unnoticed by the human mind, imprisoned as it is amid all the thronging press of the senses, so competent to seduce and deceive it with false opinions, or rather entombed in a mortal body which may be quite properly called a sepulchre, let no judge be ashamed, when he is ignorant of anything, to confess his ignorance.
קצ״ו
196[189] Otherwise in the first place the false pretender will himself deteriorate as he has banished truth from the confines of the soul, and secondly he will do immense harm to the suitors if through failing to see what is just he pronounces a blind decision.
קצ״ז
197[190] So then if the facts create a sense of uncertainty and great obscurity, and he feels that his apprehension of them is but dim, he should decline to judge the cases and send them up to more discerning judges. And who should these be but the priests,
קצ״ח
198[191] and the head and leader of the priests? For the genuine ministers of God have taken all care to sharpen their understanding and count the slightest error to be no slight error, because the surpassing greatness of the King whom they serve is seen in every matter; and therefore all officiating priests are commanded to abstain from strong drink when they sacrifice, that no poison to derange the mind and the tongue should steal in and dim the eyes of the understanding.
קצ״ט
199[192] Another possible reason for sending such cases to the priests is that the true priest is necessarily a prophet, advanced to the service of the truly Existent by virtue rather than by birth, and to a prophet nothing is unknown since he has within him a spiritual sun and unclouded rays to give him a full and clear apprehension of things unseen by sense but apprehended by the understanding.
ר׳
200[193] Again those who handle weights and scales and measures, merchants, pedlars and retailers and all others who sell goods to sustain life, solid or liquid, are no doubt subject to market-controllers, but ought, if they have sound sense, to be their own rulers and do what is just not through fear but of their own free will, for a right action if self-prompted is everywhere held in higher honour than if done under compulsion.
ר״א
201[194] And therefore he commands tradesmen, merchants and all who have taken up such a line of life to provide themselves with just scales and weights and measures, and eschew dishonest plots to injure their customers, and rather let every word and deed spring from a liberal and guileless spirit, considering that unjust gains are utterly pernicious but wealth which comes of justice can never be taken away.
ר״ב
202[195] Since workmen or labourers are offered wages as a reward for their industry and the persons so employed are the needy and not those who have abundance of resources to spare, he orders the employer not to postpone his payment but to render the stipulated wages on that very day. For it is against all reason that the well-to-do, with their ample means of livelihood should after receiving the services of the poor fail to render at once to the needy the recompense for their services.
ר״ג
203[196] Have we not here clearly indicated a warning against worse iniquities? He who having appointed the evening as the time in which a labourer should receive his recompense when he leaves for home, and does not even permit the wage though its final payment is assured to be delayed beyond the agreed hour—how much more does he forbid robbery and theft and repudiation of debts and other things of the same kind, and thus mould and shape the soul into the approved standard, into the form of true goodness itself.
ר״ד
204[197] Another excellent injunction is that no one is to revile or abuse any other, particularly a deaf-mute who can neither perceive the wrong he suffers nor retaliate in the same way, nor on an equal footing. For no kind of fighting is so utterly unfair as that where activity is the part assigned to one side and only passivity to the other.
ר״ה
205[198] This offence of reviling those who have lost the power of speech and the use of their ears is paralleled by those who cause the blind to slip or put some other obstacles in their way. For since in their ignorance they cannot surmount them, they needs must stumble about so that they both miss the right path and damage their feet.
ר״ו
206[199] Those who carry out or have a zest for such tricks are menaced by the law with the terrors of God’s wrath; this is right and reasonable, since it is God alone whose arm is extended to shield those who are unable to help themselves. And his words are little less than a plain declaration to the workers of iniquity “Ye senseless fools,
ר״ז
207[200] you expect to go undetected by those whom you wrong when you count their calamities a laughing matter and work your wickedness against those parts in which misfortune has befallen them, against their ears by your reviling, against their eyes by the pitfalls which you set in their way. But you will never go undetected by God who surveys and controls all things, when you trample on the misfortunes of stricken men, as if you could never fall into like disasters, though the body which you have always with you can become the prey of every disease and your senses are perishable, liable through some trifling and quite ordinary occasion, not merely to be dulled and darkened but also to suffer incurable disablement.”
ר״ח
208[201] These persons have lost the knowledge of their real selves; they think that distinction raises them above the natural weakness of mankind and that they have escaped the uncertainties and caprices of fortune’s hostility, fortune who often launches her sudden blasts on those who are sailing prosperously through life and sends them foundering when almost in the very harbour of felicity. What right have they to vaunt themselves and trample on the misfortunes of others without respect for the assessor of the ruler of all, justice, whose right and duty it is with the surpassing keenness of her never-sleeping eyes to survey the secrets of the corner as though they were in bright sunlight. These men,
ר״ט
209[202] it seems to me, would in their exceeding cruelty not spare the dead but would without a qualm reslay the slain, to use the popular phrase, since they shrink not to vent their outrageous fury on parts in a sense already dead, eyes which seeing not and ears which hearing not are just corpses. And therefore if he to whom these parts belong should be removed from amongst men, they will show their implacable ruthlessness and grant him none of that human and sympathetic treatment which is maintained towards the fallen even by enemies in the bitterest warfare. So much for this part of the subject.
ר״י
210[203] He also lays down an ordered series of injunctions all on the same lines by forbidding them to mate their cattle with those of a different species, or to sow the vineyards for two kinds of fruit, or to wear a garment adulterated by weaving it from two materials. The first of these prohibitions has been mentioned in our denunciation of adulterers to suggest still more clearly the wickedness of conspiring against the wedlock of other people, thereby ruining the morals of the wives as well as any honest hopes of begetting a legitimate family. For by prohibiting the crossing of irrational animals with different species he appears to be indirectly working towards the prevention of adultery.
רי״א
211[204] But the law should be mentioned also here, where the theme is justice, for we must not neglect the opportunity where possible of using the same point to bring out more than one moral. Now it is just to join together things which can associate, and the homogeneous are made for association just as the heterogeneous on the other hand cannot be blended or associated, and one who plans to bring them into abnormal companionship is unjust because he upsets a law of nature.
רי״ב
212[205] But the law in its essential holiness shows such thoughtfulness for what is just that it does not even allow the land to be ploughed by animals of unequal strength and forbids the ass and the young bull to be yoked together for this purpose, lest the weaker partner, forced to compete with the extra power of the stronger, should break down and faint on the way.
רי״ג
213[206] It is true indeed that the stronger, the bull, is named in the list of clean animals while the weaker, the ass, belongs to the unclean. Nevertheless the law did not grudge the help of justice to the seemingly inferior, in order, I believe, to teach judges a most indispensable lesson that they should not in their judgements set the meanly born at a disadvantage, when the point under examination is not concerned with birth but with good and bad conduct.
רי״ד
214[207] Also similar to these two is the last enactment in the group, which forbids wool and linen, substances differing in kind, to be woven together, for in this case not only does the difference forbid association, but also the superior strength of the one will produce a rupture rather than unification when they have to be worn.
רי״ה
215[208] Midway in the group of the three comes the order not to sow the vineyard for bearing two kinds of fruit. The first reason for this is to keep things of a different kind from being mixed and confused. For sown crops have no relation to trees nor trees to sown crops and therefore nature has not appointed the same date to both for producing their annual fruits, but has assigned spring to the one for reaping the corn harvest and the end of summer to the other for gathering the fruits.
רי״ו
216[209] Thus we find that the sown plants after their flowering wither at the same time as the trees sprout after withering. For the sown plants flower in the winter when the trees shed their leaves while on the contrary in the spring when all the sown plants are withering the trees of both types the cultivated and the wild are sprouting, and practically it is at the same time that the crops reach their fullness and the fruits begin to grow.
רי״ז
217[210] These two so greatly differing in their natures, their flowerings and their seasons for gendering their own particular products he rightly put asunder and set at a distance from each other, thus reducing disorder to order. For order is akin to seemliness and disorder to unseemliness.
רי״ח
218[211] The second reason was to prevent each of the two species from hurting and being hurt in return by abstracting the nourishment from each other. For if this nourishment is divided up, as it is in times of famine and dearth, all the plants will necessarily lose all their strength and either become sterilized and completely unproductive or else bear nothing but poor fruit as a consequence of the debility caused by their lack of nourishment.
רי״ט
219[212] The third reason was that good soil should not suffer from the pressure of two very heavy burdens, one the close unbroken density of the plants which are sown and grow on the same spot, the other the task of bearing a double crop of fruit. A single yearly tribute from a single piece of ground is enough for the owner to receive, as the same from a city is enough for a king. To attempt to levy more than one toll shows excessive avarice, and that is a vice which upsets the laws of nature.
ר״כ
220[213] And therefore the law would say to those who are minded to gratify their covetousness by laying down seed in their vineyard “do not show yourselves inferior to kings who have subdued cities and countries by arms and military expeditions. They with an eye to the future and at the same time wishing to spare their subjects deem it best to levy one yearly tribute in order to avoid reducing them in a short space of time to the utmost depths of poverty.
רכ״א
221[214] But you if you exact from the same plot in the spring its contributions of wheat and barley and in the summer the same from the fruit trees will wring the life out of it by the double taxation. For it will naturally become exhausted like an athlete who is not allowed a breathing space and a chance of rallying his forces to begin another contest.
רכ״ב
222[215] But you appear to forget too easily the injunctions which I gave for the common weal. If only you had remembered my instruction as to the seventh year, in which I laid it down that the holy land should be left at liberty in consideration of its six-years labours, which it underwent in bearing fruit at the annual season prescribed by the laws of nature, and not be worn out by any of the husbandman’s operations, you would not, recklessly and triumphantly giving full play to your covetous feelings, have planned strange forms of tillage by laying down seed in land fitted for the culture of trees and particularly the vine, just to gain every year two separate revenues both unjustly earned and thus increase your property with the levy which the lawless passion of avarice has led you to exact.
רכ״ג
223[216] For he who can bring himself to let his own farms go free in the seventh year and draw no income from them in order to give the land fresh life after its labours is not the man to overload and oppress them with a double burden.
רכ״ד
224[217] And therefore of necessity I pronounced on such acquisitions that both the autumn harvest and the fruit of the sown crops were unholy and impure, because the life-creating spirit-force in the rich soil is so to speak throttled and strangled, and because the owner vents his wild wastefulness on the gifts of God in an outburst of unjust desires which he does not confine within moderate bounds.”
רכ״ה
225[218] Should not our passionate affection go out to such enactments as these which by implication restrain and shackle the mad covetous desires which beset mankind? For he who as a commoner has learned to shun unjust gains in the treatment of his plants will, if he becomes a king with greater matters in his charge, follow his acquired habit when he comes to deal with men and also women. He will not exact a double tribute nor wring the life out of his subjects with his imposts. For long familiar habit has the power to soften harsh temperaments and in a sense to tutor and mould them to better forms, and the better forms are those which justice imprints on the soul.
רכ״ו
226[219] These laws he gives to each single person but there are other more general commands which he addresses to the whole nation in common, advising them how to behave not only to friends and allies but also to those who renounce their alliance.
רכ״ז
227[220] For if these revolt, he tells us, and shut themselves up within their walls your well-armed fighting force should advance with its armaments and encamp around them, then wait for a time, not letting anger have free play at the expense of reason, in order that they may take in hand what they have to do in a firmer and steadier spirit.
רכ״ח
228[221] They must therefore at once send heralds to propose terms of agreement and at the same time point out the military efficiency of the besieging power. And if their opponents repent of their rebellious conduct and give way and show an inclination to peace, the others must accept and welcome the treaty, for peace, even if it involves great sacrifices, is more advantageous than war.
רכ״ט
229[222] But if the adversaries persist in their rashness to the point of madness, they must proceed to the attack invigorated by enthusiasm and having in the justice of their cause an invincible ally. They will plant their engines to command the walls and when they have made breaches in some parts of them pour in altogether and with well-aimed volleys of javelins and with swords which deal death all around them wreak their vengeance without stint, doing to their enemies as the enemies would have done to them, until they have laid the whole opposing army low in a general slaughter.
ר״ל
230[223] Then after taking the silver and gold and the rest of the spoil they must set fire to the city and burn it up, in order that the same city may not after a breathing space rise up and renew its sedition, and also to intimidate and so admonish the neighbouring peoples, for men learn to behave wisely from the sufferings of others.
רל״א
231But they must spare the women, married and unmarried, since these do not expect to experience at their hands any of the shocks of war as in virtue of their natural weakness they have the privilege of exemption from war service.
רל״ב
232[224] All this shows clearly that the Jewish nation is ready for agreement and friendship with all like-minded nations whose intentions are peaceful, yet is not of the contemptible kind which surrenders through cowardice to wrongful aggression. When it takes up arms it distinguishes between those whose life is one of hostility and the reverse.
רל״ג
233[225] For to breathe slaughter against all, even those who have done very little or nothing amiss, shows what I should call a savage and brutal soul, and the same may be said of counting women, whose life is naturally peaceful and domestic, to be accessories to men who have brought about the war.
רל״ד
234[226] Indeed so great a love for justice does the law instil into those who live under its constitution that it does not even permit the fertile soil of a hostile city to be outraged by devastation or by cutting down trees to destroy the fruits.
רל״ה
235[227] “For why,” it says, “do you bear a grudge against things which though lifeless are kindly in nature and produce kindly fruits? Does a tree, I ask you, show ill will to the human enemy that it should be pulled up roots and all, to punish it for ill which it has done or is ready to do to you?
רל״ו
236[228] On the contrary it benefits you by providing the victors with abundance both of necessaries and of the comforts which ensure a life of luxury. For not only men but plants also pay tributes to their lords as the seasons come round, and theirs are the more profitable since without them life is impossible.
רל״ז
237[229] But as to the trees which have never had or have lost the power to bear fruit and all the wild type there should be no stinting in cutting them down at will for siege works and stakes and pales for entrenchment and when necessary for constructing ladders and wooden towers. For these and similar purposes will be a fitting use to which to put them.
רל״ח
238[230] So much then for the rules which come under the head of justice. But as for justice itself what writer in verse or prose could worthily sing its praise, standing as it does superior to all that eulogy or panegyric can say? Indeed one, and that the most august, of its glories, its high lineage, would be a self-sufficient matter for praise if all the rest were left untold.
רל״ט
239[231] For the mother of justice is equality, as the masters of natural philosophy have handed down to us, and equality is light unclouded, a spiritual sun we may truly call it, just as its opposite, inequality, in which one thing exceeds or is exceeded by another is the source and fountain of darkness.
ר״מ
240[232] All things in heaven and earth have been ordered aright by equality under immovable laws and statutes, for who does not know that the relation of days to nights and nights to days is regulated by the sun according to intervals of proportional equality?
רמ״א
241[233] The dates in spring and autumn every year, whose name of equinoxes is derived from the facts observed, are so clearly marked out by nature that even the least learned perceive the equality of length in the days and nights.
רמ״ב
242[234] Again are not the cycles of the moon, as she runs her course backwards and forwards from the conjunction to the full orb and from her consummation to the conjunction, regulated on the principle of equal intervals? The sum total of her phases and their sizes are exactly the same in her waxing and waning, and so correspond in both forms of quantity, namely number and magnitude.
רמ״ג
243[235] And as equality has received special honour in heaven, the purest part of all that exists, so has it also in heaven’s neighbour, the air. The fourfold partition of the year into what we call the annual seasons involves changes and alternations in the air and in these changes and alternations it shows a marvellous order in disorder. For as it is divided by an equal number of months into winter, spring, summer and autumn, three for each season, it carries the year to its fulfilment and the year, as the name ἐνιαυτός indicates, contains as it runs to its completion everything in itself, which it would not have been able to do if it had not accepted the law of the annual seasons.
רמ״ד
244[236] But equality stretches down from the celestial and aerial regions to the terrestrial too. The pure part of its being which is akin to ether it raises into the heights, but another part sun-like it sends earth-wards as a ray, a secondary brightness.
רמ״ה
245[237] For all that goes amiss in our life is the work of inequality, and all that keeps its due order is of equality, which in the universe as a whole is most properly called the cosmos, in cities and states is democracy, the most law-abiding and best of constitutions, in bodies is health and in souls virtuous conduct. For inequality on the other hand is the cause of sicknesses and vices.
רמ״ו
246[238] But since if one should wish to tell in full all the praises of equality and her offspring justice the time will fail him, be his life of the longest, it seems better to me to content myself with what has been said to awake the memory in the lovers of knowledge, and to leave the rest to be recorded in their souls, the holiest dwelling place for the jewels of God.