Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/36

16 the saintly man and the one who curbs his desires. Agreeing with Aristotelian philosophy, Maimonides asserts that the truly virtuous man practises the good as a result of an innate inclination to do so. He is superior to the one who, though he may do deeds equally good, yet in order to accomplish them, must subdue his desires which are of an evil nature. That is, the condition of the saint’s soul is better than that of the man who subdues his passions. Proverbs XXI. 10, “The soul of the wicked longeth for evil,” agrees with this sentiment. The rabbis, however, seem to contradict this opinion by saying that he who has evil thoughts and desires, but who conquers them, is greater than he who has no battle to fight. They even maintain that the greater a man is, the more powerful are his desires. On the face of it, the opinions of the rabbis and the philosophers seem to disagree. But here Maimonides uses his wonderful ability as a harmonizer of philosophical and rabbinical doctrines. He explains away the contradiction by stating that the philosophers meant by the desires for evil the inclination to commit such transgressions as murder, stealing, deceit, and so forth. The laws forbidding these are called by the rabbis “commandments”, or “ordinances”. There is no doubt that a soul that desires any of these grave evils is a bad soul. There is, however, another kind of less important transgressions, the performance of which is prohibited by statutes. It is in reference to these evils, and not to the first mentioned, that the rabbis say that if a man desires, but conquers them, his reward is great. These are, for instance, the partaking of meat and milk together, or the wearing of clothes made of two different materials. The rabbis would not say, any more than the philosophers, that the man who desires to murder but refrains from doing so is greater than the one who never desires to murder.

In Chapter VII, Maimonides discusses the partitions or walls which separate man from God, and also describes what prophecy is. As explained in Chapter II, there are intellectual and moral virtues, and their opposite vices. These