על המידות הטובות כ״טOn the Virtues 29
א׳
1[150] Rising to a still higher pitch he forbids them to devastate the land even of their enemies and enjoins them to abstain from cutting down trees and other forms of ravaging, holding it to be against all reason that indignation against men should be visited on things which are not guilty of any misdeed.
ב׳
2[151] But further, he calls upon them to look not only to the present, but, as though from some far-off height, with the keen-sighted vision of reason to consider the future also. For no one continues in the same stay, but all things are subject to vicissitudes and mutations, so that it may be expected that our enemies for the time may send ambassadors to initiate negotiations and straightway come to amicable terms.
ג׳
3[152] Now as friends it would be a great hardship to deprive them of the necessities of life and by so doing lay nothing by which may be of service to meet the uncertainty of the future. It is a very admirable saying of the ancients that in joining friendship we should not ignore the possibility of enmity, and conduct our quarrels with future friendship in view, so that everyone in his own nature lays by something to ensure his safety, and does not, through having neither deeds nor words to clothe his nakedness, repent the past and blame himself when it is no use, for his overcarelessness.
ד׳
4[153] This maxim should also be observed by states, who in peace should provide for the needs of war and in war for the needs of peace and be slow to trust their allies too freely, assuming that they will never change and become opponents, nor yet absolutely distrust their enemies as though they could never pass over into amity.
ה׳
5[154] But even if we need not do anything to help an enemy in hope of reconciliation, no plant is our enemy, but they are all pacific and serviceable, while the cultivated kind are particularly necessary, as their fruit is either food in the full sense or a possession as valuable as food. Why then should we carry on hostilities against trees which are not hostile, by cutting them down or burning them or pulling them up by the roots—these trees, which nature itself has brought to their fullness with the waters which it showers and the breezes which it tempers so happily, that they may pay their yearly tributes to mankind as subjects to a king?
ו׳
6[155] Like a good guardian he was also concerned to produce the strength and robustness which training gives, not only in animals but in plants, particularly in the cultivated kind, since they deserve more care and have not the same vigour as the wild species, but need the husbandman’s science to give them greater force and power.
ז׳
7[156] He bids them nurse the newly planted trees for three successive years, both by cutting off their superfluous overgrowths, to save them from being oppressed by the weight and starved into exhaustion through the subdivision of the nutriment, and also by digging rings and trenches around them, so that nothing mischievous may spring up at their side and hinder their growth. Also he does not permit them to pick the fruit to get enjoyment, not only because from the incomplete plant only incomplete fruit could come, just as animals not fully grown are not fully ripe for breeding, but also because of the damage it would do to the young plants, which are still, so to speak, lying low just above the ground, by preventing them from shooting.
ח׳
8[157] Thus many farmers during the spring season watch the young trees to squeeze off at once any fruit they bear before they advance in quality and size, for fear of weakening the parent plants. For, if these precautions are not taken, the result is that when they should bear fully ripened fruit they bring forth either nothing at all or abortions nipped in the bud, exhausted as they are by the labour of prematurely bearing the crops which lay such a weight upon the branches that at last they wear out the trunk and roots as well.
ט׳
9[158] But after three years when the roots have sunk deep in and are more firmly attached to the soil, and the trunk supported as it were on immovable foundations has grown and acquired vigour, it will be able to bear fully in the fourth year in harmony with the perfect number four.
י׳
10[159] But in this fourth year he commands them not to pluck the fruit for their own enjoyment but to dedicate the whole of it as a first fruit to God, partly as a thank-offering for the past, partly in hope of fertility to come and the acquisition of wealth to which this will lead.
י״א
11[160] You see how great is the kindness and graciousness which he shows, and how liberally he has spread it on every kind, first of men, even though it be an alien or an enemy, then of irrational animals, even though they be unclean, and last of all of sown crops and also trees. For he who has first learnt the lesson of fairness in dealing with the unconscious forms of existence will not offend against any that are endued with animal life, and he who does not set himself to molest the animal creation is trained by implication to extend his care to reasonable beings.