226
The Rambam
determine the exact middle, nor practically possible to live only
according to this middle/' said a student.
"Yes," they answered him. "Aristotle does not give us a rule by
which to know how far one may deviate from the middle."
"And what does Maimonides say about this?"
He believes that we can find the solution in the Torah. From it
we can learn what is the middle way."
One of the students objected that it was wrong to learn from nonJewish sources. This led to a debate. Some said that if Maimonides
cited Aristotle's statements, it was impossible to ignore them,
because Maimonides' words must be understood by comparison
with Aristotle's. Others disagreed.
They read Maimonides' words in the Shmoneh Perakim: "This
perfect Torah, which perfects us, did not command anything about
this, but it wants a person by his nature to follow the middle path.
He should eat, drink, and engage in sexual relations in a way that
is permitted and in moderation. He should build the world in
righteousness and justice. It did not intend that he should live in
caves or in the mountains, dress in sackcloth or rough wool, or
exhaust or cause suffering to his body.
"The Torah forbade or obligated what it did only so that we
should distance ourselves more from one side, by way of improving
ourselves. For all the prohibitions of forbidden foods, forbidden
sexual relations and prostitution, and the requirements for marriage
with a document and the act of betrothal, and furthermore the fact
that even one's wife is not always permitted to him, but is forbidden
at the time of her menstruation and after she has given birth — all
this is to give us boundaries, so that we should minimize our
involvement in sexual relations. And the sages prohibited sexual
relations in the daytime, as we have explained in tractate Sanhedrin.
"God commanded us all this only so that we should distance
ourselves greatly from lustfulness. We should incline from the
middle slightly toward the side of the absence of desires, so that
the characteristic of separation from physical things should be
reinforced in us. Similarly, everything that the Torah commands
about tithes, the agricultural gifts to the poor, the laws of sabbatical