a very high degree of perfection, which, in consequence of the difficulty of attainment, only a few, after long and continuous perseverance on the paths of virtue, have succeeded in reaching. If there be found a man who has accomplished this—that is one who exerts all the faculties of his soul, and directs them towards the sole ideal of comprehending God, using all his powers of mind and body, be they great or small, for the attainment of that which leads directly or indirectly to virtue—I would place him in a rank not lower than that of the prophets. Such a man, before he does a single act or deed, considers and reflects whether or not it will bring him to that goal, and if it will, then, and then only, does he do it.
Such striving does the Almighty require of us, according to the words, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might”,[1] that is, with all the faculties of thy soul, each faculty having as its sole ideal the love of God.[2] The prophets, similarly, urge us on in saying, “In all thy ways know Him”,[3] in commenting upon which the sages said, “even as regards a transgression (of the ritual or ceremonial law),”[4] meaning thereby that thou shouldst set for every action a goal, namely, the truth, even though it be, from a certain point of view, a transgression.[5] The sages of blessed memory, too, have summed up this idea in so few words and
- ↑ Deut. VI, 5.
- ↑ Cf. Moreh, I, 39 (end) which refers to this passage in the Peraḳim, and to the Mishneh Torah (Yesode ha-Torah, II, 2).
- ↑ Prov. III, 6.
- ↑ Berakot, 63a. This does not imply that the end justifies the means; that crime may be committed to bring about religious or charitable ends. It refers only to the violation of the ceremonial or ritual laws, as the breaking of the Sabbath, and eating on Yom Kippur, for the sake of saving life, etc. Cf. Ketubot, 5a, “You must remove debris to save a life on the Sabbath”; and Shabbat, 30b, “Better to extinguish the light on the Sabbath than to extinguish life, which is God’s light”, etc. The distinction in regard to the various kinds of transgressions which M. makes below, Chapter VI, pp. 76—78, applies here. See Shemonah Peraḳim, ed. Wolf, 1876, p. 53, n. 5.
- ↑ Cf. M.’s Commentary on Berakot, IX, 5: ובכל לבבך בשני יצריך ביצר הטוב וביצר הרע. Cf. also his Commentary on Abot, V, 20 (Rawicz, Commentar, p. 108), and Moreh, III, 22 (end).
