על המידות הטובות ה׳On the Virtues 5
א׳
1[22] To proceed, since the time in which human events occur may be divided into war-time and peacetime, we may observe the place taken by the virtues in both. In regard to the others this has been discussed already and will be again if need arise, but courage at this point calls for a close examination. The effects it produces in peace are extolled by him in many places of the law book, and he is always ready to seize opportunity for so doing. These have been noted in their proper places and we will now begin to describe its feats in war. One prefatory remark, however, must be made.
ב׳
2[23] He considers that in drawing up the roll of soldiers, the summons should not include all those of military age, but he would have some excluded, reasonable excuses being added for their exemption from service. These are in the first instance the cravens and cowards who are sure to be the victims of their ingrained feebleness and create fear in the other combatants.
ג׳
3[24] For the evil in one man is often well reproduced in his neighbour, particularly in war, where trepidation has confused the reasoning faculty and rendered it incapable of nicely estimating facts. People are then accustomed to call cowardice caution and timidity foresight and unmanliness safety-seeking, and so invest the basest actions with grand and fair-sounding titles.
ד׳
4[25] And, therefore, unwilling that his own cause should be injured by the cowardice of those who are to take the field and that of the enemy glorified by an easy victory over a contemptible body of degenerates and knowing that a crowd of idlers is no help but an impediment to success, he excludes the timid and faint-hearted cowards on the same principle, I think, that a general does not enforce war-service on persons who are diseased in body and are, therefore, excused by their infirmity.
ה׳
5[26] But cowardice, too, is a disease, graver than any that affects the body since it destroys the faculties of the soul. Diseases of the body flourish but for a short time, but cowardice is an inbred evil, as closely inherent or more so than any part of the bodily system from the earliest years to extreme old age, unless it is healed by God. For all things are possible to Him.
ו׳
6[27] Furthermore, he does not even enlist all the most courageous, be they ever so robust both in body and soul, and willing to fight and face danger in the forefront. While He praises them for their resolution and for the public-spirited, zealous and undaunted temper which they show, he carefully inquires whether they are in bondage to any cogent considerations, whose force leads them where it will.
ז׳
7[28] If, he says, a man has lately built a house, but has not yet had time to occupy it, or just planted a vineyard, setting the shoots in the ground with his own hand, and yet has had no opportunity to enjoy the fruits, or has betrothed himself to a maiden, but has not married her, he is to be exempted from all war service, and so gain security through the humaneness of the law. And this for two reasons.
ח׳
8[29] One is that, since the issues of war are uncertain, others should not take without toil or trouble the property of those who have laboured to get it. For it seems cruel that a man should not be able to enjoy his own, and that one should build a house and another live in it, or should plant a vineyard and another who did not plant it should reap the fruit, or should pledge himself to a maiden and another not so pledged should marry her, and, therefore, it was not right to render futile the hopes of those who expected to find themselves living under happy conditions.
ט׳
9[30] Another object was that when their bodies were fighting their souls should not play the laggard. In such circumstances, their minds must needs be feeling the strain of yearning for the joys from which they have been torn. Just as hungry or thirsty people, when some food or drink presents itself, race in pursuit of it without a backward glance in their eagerness to partake of it, so those who have laboured to gain a lawful wife or a house or a farm, and hopefully think that a time for using it is on the point of arriving, are distressed when they are robbed of its enjoyment, and thus though present in the body, are absent in the better part, the soul, which is the determining factor of success or failure.