Book V - Snyder Bible

306
according to you, work also murders, adulteries, thefts, and
also produce haughty and stolid men.
Chapter X: How to Make Progress
Then my father said: Truly you have shown briefly and incomparably
that there are evils in actions; but still I should
wish to learn this: how Elohim justly judges those who sin, as
you say, if Genesis compels them to sin? Then I answered: I
am afraid to speak anything to you, my father, because it becomes
me to hold you in all honor, else I have an answer to
give you, if it were becoming. Then says my father: Speak
what occurs to you, my son; for it is not you, but the method of
inquiry, that does the wrong, as a modest woman to an incontinent
man, if she is indignant for her safety and her honor.
Then I answered If we do not hold by the principles that we
have acknowledged and confessed, but if those things which
have been defined are always loosened by forgetfulness, we
shall seem to be weaving Penelopes web, undoing what we
have done. And therefore we ought either not to acquiesce too
easily, before we have diligently examined the doctrine propounded;
or if we have once acquiesced, and the proposition
has been agreed to, then we ought to keep by what has been
once determined, that we may go on with our inquiries respecting
other matters. And my father said: You say well, my
son; and I know why you say this: it is because in the discussion
yesterday on natural causes, you showed that some malignant
power, transferring itself into the order of the stars,
excites the lusts of men, provoking them in various ways to
sin, yet not compelling or producing sins. To this I answered:
It is well that you remember it; and yet, though you to remember
it, you have fallen into error. Then said my father:
Pardon me, my son; for I have not yet much practice in these
things: for indeed your discourses yesterday, by their truth,
shut me up to agree with you; yet in my consciousness there
are, as it were, some remains of fevers, which for a little hold
me back from faith, as from health. For I am distracted, be-