על המידות הטובות ל״דOn the Virtues 34
א׳
1[180] We have described the first and most essential form of repentance, but a man should show repentance not only for the delusions under which he long laboured in revering things created before the Creator and Maker, but also in the other fundamental concerns of life, by passing, as it were, from mob-rule, which is the vilest of misgovernments, into democracy, the government in which good order is best observed. This means passing from ignorance to knowledge of things which it is disgraceful not to know, from senselessness to good sense, from incontinence to continence, from injustice to justice, from timidity to boldness.
ב׳
2[181] For it is excellent and profitable to desert without a backward glance to the ranks of virtue and abandon vice that malignant mistress; and where honour is rendered to the God who IS, the whole company of the other virtues must follow in its train as surely as in the sunshine the shadow follows the body.
ג׳
3[182] The proselytes become at once temperate, continent, modest, gentle, kind, humane, serious, just, high-minded, truth-lovers, superior to the desire for money and pleasure, just as conversely the rebels from the holy laws are seen to be incontinent, shameless, unjust, frivolous, petty-minded, quarrelsome, friends of falsehood and perjury, who have sold their freedom for dainties and strong liquor and cates and the enjoyment of another’s beauty, thus ministering to the delights of the belly and the organs below it—delights which end in the gravest injuries both to body and soul.
ד׳
4[183] Admirable indeed too are the admonitions to repentance, in which we are taught to refit our life from its present misfit into a better and changed condition. He tells us that the thing is not overgreat nor very distant, neither in the ether far above nor at the ends of the earth, nor beyond the great sea, that we should be unable to receive it, but very near, residing in three parts of our being, mouth, heart and hands, thus symbolizing words and thoughts and actions, for the mouth is a symbol of speech, the heart of thoughts and intentions, the hand of action, and in these three lies happiness.
ה׳
5[184] For when thoughts correspond to words and actions correspond to intentions, life is praiseworthy and perfect, but when they are at strife with each other, it is imperfect and a matter for reproach. If a man does not forget to keep this harmony, he will be well-pleasing to God, thus becoming at once God-loving and God-beloved. And so in full accordance with these words there was given from above the good saying, “Thou hast chosen to-day God to be God to thee, and the Lord has chosen thee to-day to be a people to Him.”
ו׳
6[185] Glorious is this reciprocation of choice, when man hastens to serve the Existent, and God delays not to take the suppliant to Himself and anticipates the will of him who honestly and sincerely comes to do Him service. And that true servant and suppliant, even though in actual number he be but one, is in real value, what God’s own choice makes him, the whole people, in worth equal to a complete nation. And, indeed, this is true to nature.
ז׳
7[186] In a ship the pilot is worth as much as all the crew, and in an army the general as much as all the soldiers, since if he fall, defeat results as certainly as it would if the whole force were annihilated. So, too, against the worth of a whole nation the wise man can hold his own, protected by the impregnable wall of godliness.