על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ד י״דOn the Special Laws, Book IV 14
א׳
1[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.
ב׳
2[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.
ג׳
3[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.
ד׳
4[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.
ה׳
5[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.