מי יורש קנייני אלוה נ״טWho is the Heir of Divine Things 59
א׳
1[293] Next we have “but in the fourth generation they shall come back hither” (Gen. 15:16). These words are meant not only to state the date at which they should inhabit the holy land, but to bring before us the thought of the complete restoration of the soul. That restoration may be said to come in the fourth generation. How it comes deserves our careful consideration.
ב׳
2[294] The infant from the day of its birth for the first seven years, that is through the age of childhood, possesses only the simplest elements of soul, a soul which closely resembles smooth wax and has not yet received any impression of good or evil, for such marks as it appears to receive are smoothed over and confused by its fluidity.
ג׳
3[295] This is what we may call the first generation of the soul. The second is that which follows childhood and begins to associate with evils, both these engendered by the soul of its own motion, and those which are willingly accepted at the hands of others. For the instructors to sin are legion, nurses and “pedagogues” and parents and the laws of cities, written and unwritten, which extol what should be derided; and apart from and before such instruction, the soul is its own pupil in the school of guilt, so that it is throughout weighed down by its capacity for producing ills.
ד׳
4[296] “The mind of man,” says Moses, “is carefully intent upon wickedness from youth” (Gen. 8:21). The curse is heaviest on this “generation,” to use the figurative term for the literal “age,” in which the body is in its bloom and the soul inflated, when the smouldering passions are being fanned into a flame, consuming “threshing-floor and standing corn and fields” (Ex. 22:6) and whatever lies in their path.
ה׳
5[297] This stricken generation or age must be tended on its sickbed by a third, taking the form of philosophy with its healing art, and put under the spell of sound and salutary reasonings. Through these it will be able to void the vast overload of sins and to fill its void, its starvation, its fearful emptiness of right actions.
ו׳
6[298] So after this healing treatment there grows in the fourth generation within the soul power and vigour, because it has fully and firmly apprehended good sense and is immovably established in all virtues. This is what is meant by the saying “in the fourth generation they shall turn back hither.” For under that fourth number, to which he points, the soul turns back from sinning and is declared the heir of wisdom.
ז׳
7[299] The first number is that under which it is impossible to form any conception of good or ill and the soul receives no impressions. Under the second we experience the onrush of sin. The third is that in which we receive the healing treatment, when we cast off the elements of sickness and the crisis of passion is reached and passed. The fourth is that in which we make good our claim to complete health and strength, when we feel that we are turning back from wickedness and laying our hands to the good. Till then we may not do so.
