Page:Eight chapters of Maimonides on ethics.djvu/96

76 who is not innately righteous, when required to act justly, he says, “It is bliss to the righteous to do justice, but torment to the evil-doer”. This is manifestly an agreement between Scripture and philosophy.

When, however, we consult the Rabbis on this subject, it would seem that they consider him who desires iniquity, and craves for it (but does not do it), more praiseworthy and perfect than the one who feels no torment at refraining from evil; and they even go so far as to maintain that the more praiseworthy and perfect a man is, the greater is his desire to commit iniquity, and the more irritation does he feel at having to desist from it. This they express by saying, “Whosoever is greater than his neighbor has likewise greater evil inclinations”. Again, as if this were not sufficient, they even go so far as to say that the reward of him who overcomes his evil inclination is commensurate with the torture occasioned by his resistance, which thought they express by the words, “According to the labor is the reward”. Furthermore, they command that man should conquer his desires, but they forbid one to say, “I, by my nature, do not desire to commit such and such a transgression, even though the Law does not forbid it”. Rabbi Simeon ben Gamaliel summed up this thought in the words, “Man should not say, ‘I do not want to eat meat together with milk; I do not want to wear clothes made of a mixture of wool and linen; I do not want to enter into an incestuous marriage’, but he should say, ‘I do indeed want to, yet I must not, for my father in Heaven has forbidden it’”.

At first blush, by a superficial comparison of the sayings of the philosophers and the Rabbis, one might be inclined to say that they contradict one another. Such, however, is not the case. Both are correct and, moreover, are not in disagreement in the least, as the evils which the philosophers term such—and of which they say that he who has no longing for them is more to be praised than he who desires them but conquers