Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/84

64 prophet to those who asked whether the fast-day once a year should continue or not. They asked Zechariah, "Shall I weep in the fifth month with abstinence as I have done already these many years?" His answer was, "When ye fasted and mourned in the fifth and in the seventh (month) already these seventy years, did ye in anywise fast for me, yea for me? And if ye do eat and if ye do drink are ye not yourselves those that eat and yourselves those that drink?" After that, he enjoined upon them justice and virtue alone, and not fasting, when he said to them, "Thus hath said the Lord of Hosts. Execute justice and show kindness and mercy every man to his brother." He said further, "Thus hath said the Lord of Hosts, the fast-day of the fourth, and the fast-day of the fifth, and the fast of seventh, and the fast of the tenth (month) shall become to the house of Judah gladness, and joy, and merry festivals; only love ye truth and peace." . Know that by "truth" the intellectual virtues are meant, for they are immutably true, as we have explained in Chapter II, and that by "peace" the moral virtues are designated, for upon them depends the peace of the world.

But to resume. Should those of our co-religionists—and it is of them alone that I speak—who imitate the followers of other religions, maintain that when they torment their bodies, and renounce every joy, that they do so merely to discipline the faculties of their souls by inclining somewhat to the one extreme, as is proper, and in accordance with our own recommendations in this chapter, our answer is that they are in error, as I shall now demonstrate. The Law did not lay down its prohibitions, or enjoin its commandments, except for just this purpose, namely, that by its disciplinary effects we may persistently maintain the proper distance from either extreme. For, the restrictions regarding all the forbidden foods, the prohibitions of illicit intercourse, the fore-warning against prostitution, the duty of performing the legal marriage-rites which, nevertheless, does not permit intercourse at all times, as, for instance, during the period of menstruation, and after child-birth, besides its