約伯倫理 第 421 章

Verse 21: 'Even if I be simple, my very soul shall not know it.' 37. The usefulness and the harm of our ignorance. Often a fault carries to completion what virtue began.—For the most part, if we know the good things we do, we are led into pride; if we do not know them, we scarcely keep them. For who does not grow at least a little proud from the awareness of his own virtue? Or who, on the other hand, keeps within himself a good that he does not know? But against both these dangers what remains, save that we should not know, even while knowing, the right things we do—so that we may esteem them both as right and as very small; to the end that the knowledge of our uprightness may quicken the soul to keep watch, and the estimate of our smallness may not lift it up into swelling pride?

But there are some things that cannot easily be known by us, even while they are being done. For often we are kindled with righteous zeal against the faults of transgressors; and when we are carried by anger beyond the bounds of equity, we reckon this to be the zeal of just severity. Often we take up the office of preaching, that thereby we may serve our brothers' benefit; but unless we please those to whom we speak, what we preach is by no means gladly received. And when the mind studies to please for a useful end, it basely slides down into the love of its own praise; and that very soul which elsewhere was striving to rescue others from the captivity of vices, itself, taken captive, begins to serve its own applause.

For the appetite for human praise is like a lurking robber, who joins himself from the side to those walking the straight road, so that, drawing his sword from concealment, he may cut down the life of the travellers. And when the intention of an intended benefit is drawn aside to private aims, in a dreadful manner one and the same work is carried to completion by fault which virtue had begun. Often, too, from the very outset the thought seeks one thing and the action displays another. 38. Sometimes the action is right, but not the intention.—Often the very thought does not show itself faithful to itself, because it turns one thing before the mind's eyes and hastens by its intention far off to another.

For very often some men crave earthly rewards while they defend justice, and reckon themselves innocent, and exult that they are defenders of uprightness. But if the hope of money is withdrawn from them, they at once cease from the defence of justice; and yet they think themselves defenders of justice, and assert that they are upright, though they are seeking not uprightness but money. Against such it is well said through Moses: 'Justly shalt thou pursue that which is just' (Deut. xvi, 20). For he pursues what is just unjustly who is roused to the defence of justice not by zeal for virtue but by love of a temporal reward. He pursues what is just unjustly who is not at all afraid to sell the very justice which he professes.

To pursue what is just justly, then, is to seek that very justice, in asserting justice, for its own sake. Often we do right things, and expect no rewards, no praises from men; but nevertheless the mind, lifted up into confidence in itself, scorns to please those from whom it seeks nothing, despises their judgments, and hurries itself, in an ill freedom, through the precipices of self-exaltation; and thence it is buried under a worse fault, precisely there where—as though the vices were conquered—it boasts that it is subject to no cravings. 39. From excessive or from no self-examination there is danger for us.—Often, while we examine ourselves more than is just, by that very zeal for discernment we err the more indiscreetly;

and the edge of our mind, the more it strives to see, the more it is darkened, because he too who unseasonably gazes at the sun's rays is plunged into darkness; and there he is compelled to see nothing, where he strains to see the more. Since, therefore, either being sluggish in our self-inquiry we know nothing at all, or if we search ourselves with subtle examination, we for the most part grow dim amid what is base and what is virtuous, it is rightly now said: 'Even if I be simple, my very soul shall not know it.' As if it were openly said: With what rashness do I refute my Creator's judgments against me, I who do not even know myself out of the mist of my infirmity? Whence it is well said through the prophet: 'The deep uttered its voice from the height of its imagining' (Hab. iii, 10, according to the Seventy).

For the deep bears the height of imagining when the human mind, darkened by boundless thinking, does not penetrate even itself in examining itself. But it is to give voice from this height, because, while it cannot lay hold of itself, it is driven to rise up into wonder, so that it dares not scrutinize what is above it; and thereby, pondering its own incomprehensibility, it is unable to find what it is. But the hearts of the just, because they cannot examine themselves to perfection, bear with grief this exile of blindness. Whence it is also added, in the same place: 'And it shall weary me of my life.' The just man is wearied of living, because both by working he does not cease to seek life, and yet he cannot find the merit of that same life of his.

For he draws the balance of examination from the bosom of his inmost equity; and thereby he falls short in himself as to the effect of finding, precisely where, snatched above himself, he grows into the force of inquiry. But there is a consolation of our darkness, brought back to the mind—the just and incomprehensible power of the Creator, which neither abandons the wicked without vengeance, nor fails to transcend the justice of the upright by the immensity of its incomprehensibility. Whence it is fitly subjoined: