על החוקים לפרטיהם, ספר ד מ״בOn the Special Laws, Book IV 42
א׳
1[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.
ב׳
2[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.
ג׳
3[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?
ד׳
4[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.
ה׳
5[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.
ו׳
6[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.
ז׳
7[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.
ח׳
8[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.
ט׳
9[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.