על שהרע נוהג לארוב לטוב ג׳That the Worse is wont to Attack the Better 3
א׳
1[6] It is evident from these words that they are in the plain, caring for the irrational powers within them. And, because he is unable to bear the too great severity of his father’s knowledge, Joseph is sent to them, that in the hands of more lenient instructors he may learn what he ought to do and what will be beneficial; for the creed he has hitherto followed is one woven of incongruous elements, multifarious and complex in the highest degree. This is why the lawgiver says that a coat of many colours was made for him (Gen. 37:3), indicating by this that he is the promulgator of a doctrine full of mazes and hard to disentangle.
ב׳
2[7] He is one who moulds his theories with an eye to statecraft rather than to truth. This appears in his treatment of the three kinds of good things, those pertaining to the outside world, to the body, and to the soul. These, though separated from each other by complete diversity of nature, he brings together and combines into one, claiming to show that each is in need of each and all of all, and that the aggregate resulting from taking them all together in a body is a perfect and really complete good; but that the constituents out of which this is compacted, though indeed parts or elements of good things, are not good things in perfection.
ג׳
3[8] He points out that neither fire nor earth nor any of the four elements, out of which the universe was formed, is a world, but the coming together and blending of the elements into one; and argues that in precisely the same way happiness is found to be neither a peculiar property of the things of the outside world, nor of the things pertaining to the body, nor of those pertaining to the soul, taken by themselves. He argues that each of the three classes mentioned has the character of a part or element and that it is only when they are all taken together in the aggregate that they produce happiness.