the impulses of matter — such as eating, drinking, copulation, anger, and all the habits consequent upon desire and anger — to be ashamed of them, and to set for them limits in his soul. With regard to what is indispensable, like eating and drinking, he must confine himself to what is most useful and to what corresponds to the need for nourishment, not to | pleasure. He must also reduce speech about, and gatherings for, such matters. You know how [the Sages] disliked meals that are not \_partaken of] with a view to a com¬ mandment 18 and that the virtuous like Phinehas ben Yair never ate in somebody else’s house — our holy Rabbi 19 wished him to eat at his house, but he did not do it.20 What is true of eating applies to drinking, as far as their purpose is concerned. As for gatherings with a view to drinking intoxicants, you should regard them as more shameful than gatherings of naked people with uncovered private parts who excrete in daylight21 sitting together. The explanation of this is as follows: Excreting is a necessary thing that man cannot refrain from by any device whatever, whereas being drunk is an act committed by a bad man in virtue of his free choice. The disapproval of the uncovering of the private parts is a generally accepted opinion, not a thing cognized by the intellect, whereas the corruption of the intellect and of the body is shunned by the intellect. For this reason one who prefers to be a human being ought to shun it and not to speak of it. With regard to copulation, I need not add anything to what I have said in my Commentary on Aboth 22 about the aversion in which it is held by what occurs in our wise and pure Law, and about the prohibition against mentioning it or against making it in any way or for any reason a subject of conversation. You know the dictum of [the Sages]23 that Elisha, peace be on him, was called a Saint only because he never thought about these matters, so that he never had a venereal dream. And you know their dictum concerning Jacob, peace be on him, that he had never had a seminal emission before [engendering] Reuben.2* All these are things traditionally transmitted in the religious community in order to make its members acquire human habits. You know what they say: Thoughts about sin are worse than the sin.2S In order to explain this, I have a very extraordinary interpretation, which is as follows: A man com¬ mitting an act of disobedience does it only, as I have made clear, because of the accidents consequent upon his matter 5 | I mean to say that he commits an act of disobedience through his bestiality. But thought is one of the 20. Cf. B.T., Hullin, 7a— b. 21. Literally: by day.
22. Cf. Commentary- on the Mishnah, Aboth, I g.
23. Cf. Leviticus Rabbah, XXIV; B.T., Berakhoth, 10b.
24. Genesis Rabbah, XCVIII and XCIX. 25. B.T., Yoma, 29a.
14^] The Guide of the Perplexed III -8 properties of a human being that are consequent upon his form. Con¬ sequently if he gives his thought a free scope in respect to disobedience, he commits an act of disobedience through the nobler of his two parts. Now the sin of him who does an injustice through making an ignorant slave serve him is not like the sin of him who makes a free man who is excellent serve him. For the human form and the properties consequent upon it ought only to be employed with a view to what befits it, namely, union with what is the highest, and not with a view to descending to the lowest degree.
You know the severe prohibition that obtains among us against obscene language.26 This also is necessary. For speaking with the tongue is one of the properties of a human being and a benefit that is granted to him and by which he is distinguished. As it says: Who hath made man’s mouth? 27 And the prophet says: The Lord God hath given me the tongue of them that are taught26 Now this benefit granted us with a view to perfection in order that we learn and teach should not be used with a view to the greatest deficiency and utter disgrace, so that one says what the ignorant and sinful Gentiles say in their songs and their stories, suitable for them but not for those to whom it has been said: And ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and a holy nation.29 And whoever has applied his thought or his speech to some of the stories concerning that sense which is a disgrace to us, so that he thought more about drink or copulation than is needful or recited songs about these matters, has made use of the benefit granted to him, applying and utilizing it to com¬ mit an act of disobedience with regard to Him who has granted the benefit and to transgress His orders. He is like those of whom it is said: And I multiplied unto her silver and gold, which they used for Baal.50 I can also give the reason why this our language31 is called the Holy Language. It should not be thought that this is, | on our part, an empty appellation32 or a mis¬ take; in fact it is indicative of true reality. For in this holy language no word at all has been laid down in order to designate either the male or the female organ of copulation, nor are there words designating the act itself that brings about generation, the sperm, the urine, or the excrements. No word at all designating, according to its first meaning, any of these things has been laid down in the Hebrew language, they being signified by terms used in a figurative sense and by allusions. It was intended thereby to indicate that these things ought not to be mentioned and consequently that no terms designating them should be coined. For these are things about which one 32. laghw. Certain manuscripts have ghuluww. a word that may be translated “exag¬ geration.” Ibn Tibbon’s translation agrees with the latter version, 4^6 The Guide of the Perplexed III • 9 [15a ought to be silent; however, when necessity impels mentioning them, a device should be found to do it by means of expressions deriving from other words, just as the most diligent endeavor should be made to be hidden when necessity impels doing these things. The male organ they have called gid [sinew], which is used because of the likeness; for they have said: And thy neck is an iron sinew,33 They have also called it shaphkha [ instrument for pouring-out] 3+ because of its function. The female organ has been called qebatha [her stomach ],35 qeba being the term designating the stomach. As for rehem [vulva] it is the term designating the part of the entrails in which the fetus is formed. The term designating excrements is so^a, deriving from yaso* [to go out]. The term designating urine is meme raglayim [waters of the feet]. The term designating sperm is shikhbath zerac [layer of seed]. The act itself that brings about generation has no name at all, the following expressions signifying it: yishkab [he lies], yibcal [he marries], yiqah [he takes], yegalleh cervah [he uncovers the nakedness], and no others. The verb yishgal should not lead you into error so that you think that it is the term designating this action, for shegal is merely the term designating a female slave prepared for copulation. Thus: At thy right hand doth stand the female slave,36 And its saying, yishgalenahf in the text that is written,38 means he shall take her as a slave girl for this purpose.
In the greater part of the chapter we have turned aside from the purpose of the Treatise | to deal with moral and also religious matters. However, though these matters do not wholly belong to the purpose of the Treatise, the order of the discourse has led to that.
CHAPTER 9 Matter is a strong veil preventing the apprehension of that which is separate from matter as it truly is. It does this even if it is the noblest and purest matter, I mean to say even if it is the matter of the heavenly spheres. All the more is this true for the dark and turbid matter that is ours. Hence whenever our intellect aspires to apprehend the deity or one of the 38. In contradistinction to the rectification set down below the page and read when the text is recited. According to this rectification, the word should be read yishkabenah (he shall lie with her).
15^] The Guide of the Perplexed III *9 ^7 intellects,1 there subsists this great veil interposed between the two. This is alluded to in all the books of the prophets; namely, that we are separated by a veil from God and that He is hidden from us by a heavy cloud, or by dark¬ ness or by a mist or by an enveloping cloud, and similar allusions to our incapacity to apprehend Him because of matter. This is the intention of its saying: Clouds and darkness are round about Him;2 that intimates the fact that the obstacle consists in the tenebrous character of our substance, and not in His, may He be exalted, being a body surrounded by mist or an enveloping cloud or a heavy cloud, which prevents His being seen, as the external sense of the parable would indicate. Moreover this parable has been repeated, for it says: He made darkness His hiding place} Similarly when it speaks of His manifestation, may He be exalted, in a thick cloud 4 and in darkness, cloud, and thick darkness,5 it is also only in order that the notion in question be inferred from this manner of speech. For everything that is apprehended in a vision of prophecy is only a parable for some notion. And though that great assembly was greater than any vision of prophecy and beyond any analogy, it also indicated a | notion;6 I refer to His manifesta¬ tion, may He be exalted, in a thick cloud. For it draws attention to the fact that the apprehension of His true reality is impossible for us because of the dark matter that encompasses us and not Him, may He be exalted; for He, may He be exalted, is not a body. It is, moreover, well known and generally accepted in the religious community that the day of the Gathering at Mount Sinai was a day of clouds, of mist, and of a light rain. He says: Lord, when Thou didst go forth out of Secir, when Thou didst march out of the field of Edom, the earth trembled, the heavens also dropped, yea, the clouds dropped water} This is also what is intended in its dictum: darkness, cloud, and thick darkness, and not that He, may He be exalted, was encompassed by dark¬ ness; for near Him, may He be exalted, there is no darkness, but8 per¬ petual, dazzling light the overflow of which illumines all that is dark — in accordance with what is said in the prophetic parables: And the earth did shine with His glory} 1. I.e., one of the separate intellects. 2. Ps. 97:2. 3. Ps. 18:12.
4. Exod. 19:9. 5. Deut. 4:11. 6. Literally: it was not without a notion.
7. Judg. 5:4, 8. Or: unless it be. 9. Ezek. 43:2.
CHAPTER 10 Those Mutakallimun, as I have made known to you, do not imagine nonbeing 1 other than absolute nonbeing; but they do not consider the privations2 of all the habitus as privations. For they think that every priva¬ tion and the corresponding habitus — as, for instance, blindness and sight, death ana life - have the status of two contraries, like the warm and the cold. For this reason they say in absolute parlance that nonbeing does not need an agent, for only an act calls necessarily for an agent. This is correct from a certain point of view. Though they say that nonbeing does not need an agent, they say, according to their principle, that God makes blind, makes deaf, and causes that which moves to rest. | For these privations are to their mind existent things. It behooves us to let you know our opinion about this, according to what is required by philosophic speculation. Now you know already that what removes an impediment of motion is, from a certain point of view', the mover. Thus in the case of one who removes a pillar from under a piece of wood, whereupon the latter falls down because of its natural weight, we say that he who moved the pillar moved the piece of wood $ this is stated in the “Akroasis.” 3 In the same way we say of one who removes a certain habitus that he produces the corresponding privation, though that privation is not an existent thing. Just as we say of him who puts out a lamp in the night that he has brought about darkness, we say of one who has destroyed sight that he has made blindness, even though darkness and blind¬ ness are privations and do not need an agent. In accord with this interpreta¬ tion, the dictum of Isaiah — who forms the light and creates darkness, who makes peace and creates evW-h&s become clear. For darkness and evil are privations. Consider that he does not say, who makes darkness and who makes evil, for these are not existent things with which the word making could be connected. With regard to these two things, he simply uses the expression who creates. For this word has a connection with nonbeing5 in the Hebrew language. Thus it says: In the beginning God created, and so on;6 namely, out of nonbeing. And the relation between privation7 and the act of an agent is according to the manner that we have stated. It is in this way like¬ wise that you should understand its dictum: Who hath set man’s mouth? Or 1, cadam. The term means both “nonbeing ’ and “privation. ^ 2. a'dam, the plural of the word translated above as “nonbeing.”
3. Cf. Aristotle Physics viii.4.255b24 If. 4. Isa. 45:7- 5- Or- privation.
6. Gen. 1:1. 7. Or: nonbeing.
i?a ] The Guide of the Perplexed III 10 jjy who setteth the dumb or deaf, or the seeing or the blind?9 However, another interpretation of this dictum is possible; namely, it can be said: who is he that created man as a being endowed with speech, or who creates him as a being lacking speech? In the latter case what would be meant would be the bring¬ ing into existence of matter that is not capable of receiving [ a certain habitus whatever that habitus may be. For he who brings into existence a certain kind of matter that is incapable of receiving a certain habitus may be said to have made the privation in question 5 just as one who is able to save an individual from perishing and refrains from saving him may be said to have killed him. It has thus become clear to you that, according to every opinion, the act of an agent can in no way be connected with a privation; the agent can only be said to have produced the privation by accident, as we have explained. On the other hand, that which is produced by an essential act of the agent9 is necessarily a thing that exists whoever the agent may be, for his act can only be connected with an existent thing.
After this preamble, you should recall that which has been demonstrated with regard to the fact that evils are only evils in relation to something; and that everything that is an evil with reference to one particular existent, that evil is the privation of this thing or of one of the states suitable for it. For this reason the following proposition may be enunciated in an absolute man¬ ner: all evils are privations. With respect to a man, for instance, his death is an evil, since death is his nonbeing.10 Similarly his illness, his poverty, or his ignorance are evils with regard to him, and all of them are privations of habitus. If you pursue all the particular cases falling under the above- mentioned general proposition, you will find that it is never at fault11 except in the opinion of one who does not distinguish between privation and habitus and between two contraries or one who does not know the natures of all things — one, for instance, who does not know that health is in general a certain equilibrium belonging to the domain of relation and that the priva¬ tion of this relation generally constitutes illness. With regard to every living thing, death is the privation of form. Similarly with regard to every¬ thing that is destroyed among the other existents, its destruction is nothing but the privation of its form.
After these premises, | it will be known with certainty that it may in no way be said of God, may He be cherished and magnified, that He produces 8. Exod. 4:11. g. Literally: that which the agent does by essence.
10. Or: his privation [of existence]. In this particular instance, the difference between the two meanings of the Arabic word *adam (cf. n. 1, this chap.) may be of no great im¬ portance for the signification of Maimonides’ phrase.
11. Literally: never lies.
440 The Guide of the Perplexed III • ll [ 17 b evil in an essential act; I mean that He, may He be exalted, has a primary intention to produce evil. This cannot be correct. Rather all His acts, may He be exalted, are an absolute12 good; for He only produces13 being, and all being is a good. On the other hand, all the evils are privations with which an act is only connected in the way we have explained: namely, through the fact that God has brought matter into existence provided with the nature it has — namely, a nature that consists in matter always being a concomitant of privation, as is known. Hence it is the cause of all passing-away and of all evil. For this reason all the things that were not provided by God with this matter are not subject to passing-away and to being attained by any of the evils. Accordingly the true reality of the act of God in its entirety is the good, for the good is being. For this reason the book that has illumined the dark¬ ness of the world has enunciated literally the following statement: And God saw everything that He had made, and, behold, it was very good.1* Even the existence of this inferior matter, whose manner of being it is to be a con¬ comitant of privation entailing death and all evils, all this is also good in view of the perpetuity of generation and the permanence of being through suc¬ cession. For this reason Rabbi Meir interpreted the words: And, behold, it was very [me’od] good— and, behold, death [maveth ] was good,15 according to the notion to which we have drawn attention.
Remember what I have told you in this chapter and understand it. Then everything the prophets and the Sages have said will become clear to you regarding the good being in its entirety an essential act of the deity. Bereshith Rabbah says literally: Nothing that is evil descends from above}5 \ CHAPTER 11 These great evils that come about between the human individuals who inflict them upon one another because of purposes, desires, opinions, and beliefs, are all of them likewise consequent upon privation. For all of them derive from ignorance, I mean from a privation of knowledge. Just as a blind man, because of absence of sight, does not cease stumbling, being wounded, and also wounding others, because he has nobody to guide him on his way, the various sects of men — every individual according to the extent 12. Literally: pure. 15. Literally: does (or: acts). 14. Gen. 1:31.
15. Genesis Rabbah, IX. 16. Genesis Rabbah, LI.
18a ] The Guide of the Perplexed III 12 / of his ignorance — does to himself and to others great evils from which individuals of the species suffer. If there were knowledge, whose relation to the human form is like that of the faculty of sight to the eye, they would refrain from doing any harm to themselves and to others. For through cogni¬ tion of the truth, enmity and hatred are removed and the inflicting of harm by people on one another is abolished. It holds out this promise, saying: And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid, and so on. And the cow and the bear shall feed, and so on. And the sucking child shall play, and so on.1 Then it gives the reason for this, saying that the cause of the abolition of these enmities, these discords, and these tyrannies, will be the knowledge that men will then have concerning the true reality of the deity. For it says: They shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain,• for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea? Know this. | CHAPTER 12 CHAPTER 12 Often it occurs to the imagination of the multitude that there are more evils in the world than there are good things. As a consequence, this thought is contained in many sermons and poems of all the religious com¬ munities,1 which say that it is surprising if good exists in the temporal, whereas the evils of the temporal are numerous and constant. This error is not found only among the multitude, but also among those who deem that they know something.2 Razi3 has written a famous book, which he has entitled “Divine Things.” He filled it with the enormity of his ravings and his ignorant notions. Among them there is a notion that he has thought up, namely, that there is more evil than good in what exists 5 if you compare man’s well-being and his pleasures in the time span of his well-being with the pains, the heavy sufferings, the infirmities, the paralytic afflictions, the wretchedness, the 1. Isa. 11:6-8. 2. Isa. 11:9.
1. Or: nations. 2. Or: an individual who deems that he knows something.
3. Maimonides refers here to Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn Zakariyya al-Razi, who died sometime between 923 and 932. Razi (the Rhazes of the Latins) was a famous physician and a philosopher who attacked religion based on prophetic revelation. Only fragments of the book mentioned by Maimonides have come down to us. Cf. Translator’s Introduc¬ tion.
19 442 The Guide of the Perplexed III • 12 [ 18& sorrows, and the calamities that befall him, you find that his existence — he means the existence of man — is a punishment and a great evil inflicted upon him. He began to establish this opinion by inductively examining these misfortunes, so as to oppose all that is thought by the adherents of the truth regarding the beneficence and manifest munificence of the deity and regarding His being, may He be exalted, the absolute good and regarding all that proceeds from Him being indubitably an absolute good. The reason for this whole mistake lies in the fact that this ignoramus and those like him among the multitude consider that which exists only with reference to a human individual. Every ignoramus imagines that all that exists exists with a view to his individual sake; it is as if there were nothing that exists except him. And if something happens to him that is contrary to what he wishes, he makes the trenchant judgment that | all that exists is an evil. However, if man considered and represented to himself that which exists and knew the smallness of his part in it, the truth would become clear and manifest to him. For this extensive raving entertained by men with regard to the multitude of evils in the world is not said by them to hold good with regard to the angels or with regard to the spheres and the stars or with regard to the elements and the minerals and the plants composed of them or with regard to the various species of animals, but their whole thought only goes out to some indi¬ viduals belonging to the human species. If someone has eaten bad food and consequently was stricken with leprosy, they are astonished how this great ill has befallen him and how this great evil exists. They are also astonished when one who frequently copulates is stricken blind, and they think it a marvelous thing4 the calamity of blindness that has befallen such a man and other such calamities.