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Section IV.
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It has occurred to me — may God guide you — that I should compile from these categories thirteen types.
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I will mention what I have learned of what prompted each group to prefer exclusive use of one of them for the whole of their lives,
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and then explain what they neglected and overlooked in the matter.
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I will also spread out each category by identifying the proper domain for its use — one that has design and fitness.
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And if one were to gather everything I mention that each devotee abandons across all thirteen categories, I would call that totality 'A Book of Complete Renunciation.'
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Let me first enumerate their number. I say: the categories of loves are thirteen, and they are:
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Renunciation; eating and drinking; intercourse; passionate love; accumulation of wealth; children; building up the world; life; leadership; vengeance; wisdom; worship; and rest.
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I will then present each one to reason, mention the arguments for it, establish what warrants renunciation of it, and clarify its rightful domain.
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The Book of Complete Renunciation.
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Chapter One: On Renunciation.
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I say: certain people held that what a person must practice in the abode of this world is renunciation, wandering in the mountains, weeping, grief, and lamentation over this abode.
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They said: we prescribe this because it is an abode of transience, carried off together with its inhabitants, stable for no one.
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However long a person has been in it and however settled his eyes were, it eventually turns against him: his joy becomes grief, his honor becomes humiliation, his happiness becomes misery.
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As it says: 'A rich man lies down and is not gathered; he opens his eyes — he is gone. Terrors overtake him like waters; a storm sweeps him away in the night' (Job 27:19–20).
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Even if a person strains with all his effort to establish control, his ignorance overcomes him.
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If he tries to be clean, his filth overcomes him; if he tries to be healthy, his bodily corruption overcomes him; if he tries to be wise, his tongue's rashness overcomes him.
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As it says: 'If I justify myself, my own mouth condemns me; though I am blameless, it would prove me perverse' (Job 9:20).
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Not one person knows what will befall him in it — illness, catastrophe, bereavement, grief, loss, and other afflictions.
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As it says: 'Do not boast of tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring forth' (Prov. 27:1).
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The more a person gets from it and the more he sees of it, the more intense his thirst for it; and the more he tries to cling to it, the more the ropes and anchors are cut from his hands.
As it says: 'Whose trust is a spider's web and whose confidence is a spider's house — he leans upon',
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'His house — it does not stand; he grasps it — it does not hold.' What does this world offer but falsehood, injustice, and perjury throughout a lifetime?
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As it says: 'Their span is toil and trouble' (Ps. 90:10).
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How many mighty ones has it crushed and shattered — as it says: 'The stouthearted were stripped of their spoil; they slept their sleep' (Ps. 76:6).
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How many powerful ones has it humiliated and degraded — as it says: 'To desecrate the pride of all glory, to dishonor all the honored of the earth' (Isa. 23:9).
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How many hoped for its good and it gave them evil instead; who opened his eye to see its light and it grew dark before his face.
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As it says: 'When I hoped for good, evil came; when I waited for light, darkness came' (Job 30:26).
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It cast its heat upon a person and set its intensity against his weakness — as it says: 'Your wrath has weighed upon me' (Ps. 88:8).
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And what of sins and transgressions — what of accounting and punishment? What of the alienation between him and his Creator, until He becomes to him like a predator in anger?
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As it says: 'He hunts me like a lion and again works wonders against me' (Job 10:16), and also: 'Behold the day of the Lord comes, cruel, with wrath and fierce anger' (Isa. 13:9).
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So they said: one must reject this world — no wise person should build in it, nor plant, nor marry, nor beget offspring.
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Nor should he dwell among those who chose these pursuits, lest they contaminate him and he be infected by their character — but instead let him separate himself in the mountains.
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Eating whatever vegetation he finds until he dies in lamentation and grief.
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I reflected on what they said and found most of it correct. But they went too far in abandoning civilized life.
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For they abandoned what is truly indispensable: food, covering, and shelter — indeed they neglected even their own well-being.
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For their abandonment of marriage cuts off procreation. If this were correct, all people should practice it; but if all people did, the rational species would cease — and with its cessation
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— wisdom, Torah, resurrection, heaven, and earth would all cease.
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And what of the mortal risks one faces from wild animals, beasts, serpents, heat, cold, and catastrophes?
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And what of nature's disruption, mental roughness, obsessive thoughts, and delirium — caused by lack of fine food and cool water, corruption of the blood, and the stirring of melancholy?
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Until they must turn to the physicians of civilized society for treatment — which sometimes helps them and sometimes does not.
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They may grow so wild that they fear people will kill them, and come to hate them — seeing them as wicked rebels — to the point of considering it permissible to shed their blood.
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And they come to adopt the character of beasts, departing from humanity — as it says: 'The daughter of my people has become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness' (Lam. 4:3).
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And it says: 'They brayed in the ravines, they dwelt in the holes of the earth and in the rocks; among the shrubs they howled; under the nettles they huddled' (Job 30:6–7).
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So they have utterly destroyed themselves.
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The trait of worldly renunciation is beautiful in a person only when used in its proper place.
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That is: when forbidden food, forbidden intercourse, or forbidden wealth presents itself to him — then let him deploy this trait so that it restrains him from those things.
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As it says: 'For what does a person gain from all his toil and the striving of his heart with which he toils under the sun?' (Eccl. 2:22).