Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/67



that transgressions and observances of the Law have their origin only in two of the faculties of the soul, namely, the sensitive and the appetitive, and that to these two faculties alone are to be ascribed all transgressions and observances. The faculties of nutrition and imagination do not give rise to observance or transgression, for in connection with neither is there any conscious or voluntary act. That is, man cannot consciously suspend their functions, nor can he curtail any one of their activities. The proof of this is that the functions of both these faculties, the nutritive and the imaginative, continue to be operative when one is asleep, which is not true of any other of the soul’s faculties.