The Quest for Perfection

Indeed, our human situation now stands on such a low level that we need not look either to intellectual or to outside factors to account for its stumbling blocks or confusions. Nowadays, if one is in the case of “having studied [Torah] and abandoned it,” it is not his own reason nor outside compulsion¹ that has caused this. We must find a closer and simpler explanation that has the power to undo a person’s spiritual resolution, neither by reason nor by compulsion, but still achieving the result that he distances himself and does not remain [within the orbit of practicing Judaism]. These are “the demands of life.”

The demands of life are among the most enduring of a person’s existence. Indeed, he does not regard them as either praiseworthy or blameworthy, but as an inevitable necessity. Therefore, a person is not his own master to make decisions, to erect fences and safeguards [against bad influences], or to create new conditions or develop ideologies, for he does not know where the demands of life would lead him. At the moment that he is pressured by a demand of life, it seems to him that he will achieve something and it will make his situation easier. He is not then empowered to wait until the adverse demand will pass, but inadvertently he runs immediately to direct his efforts to the place that his imagination points him to. He himself knows full well that that way is lost, but because he is totally captivated by the demands of life, he regards it as perfectly permissible, and also finds a principle that supports whatever he desires. [ . . . ] If creation were done from the outset only for one’s physical needs, man’s entire objective in his world would be only to resolve his material needs and satisfy the demands of nature, along with his fancies and desires; then a person would not need to seek his path in life and choose to gather the good aspects within it. For then he would be like all the animals, whose path and purpose in life is to seek what nature demands. In that case there would be no room to criticize them for “turning their stomachs into their god and their [base animal] desires into their law,”² for they have nothing more than nature, as that is why they were created.

But we have now found that creation occurs in another manner entirely. Man is not created for natural purposes due to two reason: first, in respect of the teachings of the Torah, and second, in respect of the teaching of reason. For as we have found the creation of man in nature, desire, and habit, so too have we found the creation of Torah, given by heaven to teach man the way that he should follow. And we find in the Torah that the purpose of creation is to have man to rule over his desires—as it is written: Were it not for My covenant, I would not have set down the laws of heaven and earth (Jeremiah 33:25). For this reason, the Torah was not given to the angels, who possessed incorporeal intellects. Do they experience jealousy? Do they feel hatred?³ It follows that the teaching of the Torah is directed to man, so that he should choose a different, higher ultimate objective, and all those inclinations based on nature, desire, and habit are as nothing and of no avail. Similarly, regarding the teaching of reason we also find that a human being cannot in any way turn his stomach into his god or his [animal] desires into his law. For what does nature give him? Only anger, pain, and a shortening of his days. For the givings of nature are all takings, and all the good it offers are only vengeance and cruelty. For you have no enemy greater than a person’s desire. As the parable in The Prince and the Hermit goes: man in his world is likened to a dog that snatched a dry bone and avidly indulged in biting it, trying to extract some pleasure from it. He did not notice that it was nothing but a dry bone, which could give him nothing, but eagerly bit and gnawed it until his teeth began bleeding and the dry bone was covered in his own blood. Then the dog rejoiced with the dry bone, for at last it got something from it. Indeed, a dog he was, and he did not know nor could he understand that the blood was only from his own teeth, and the bone gave him nothing at all.⁴

Thus, a man grabs after what his eyes see and his appetite desires, wishing to attain life. And he does attain something. But what is it? Like the dog, only the blood that exudes from his teeth. For nature gives him nothing, but takes from him, and all the pleasure that a person feels from what nature gives is not from the giving, but from the taking. What shame and pain would a person feel if he ever considered what truly makes him happy and from what he lives! Only from his own death and only from the loss of his powers and faculties, and only from what will lead him to a place of darkness and the shadow of death. This is the giving of nature and the benefit of the imagination.

If so, can we take this as our objective and call this the purpose of life? Even if creation were only for the purpose of nature and the Torah did not teach us anything, a person should feel on his own that his whole purpose is higher than desire and loftier than nature. Even the philosophers, who did not know about the Torah, recognized through the faculty of reason that man cannot live like an animal.

It follows that any way you look at it, a person should feel that the seeking and grabbing at the stomach’s pangs and desire’s demands is absurd not only on logical grounds, but even on natural ones. It is just like the dog’s biting at the dry bone in order to extract something to lick out of it, while actually attaining nothing but the blood of his own teeth.

The objective that is free from all worry and pain, and the purpose that gives true pleasure, is what Rabbi Elijah [the gaon] of Vilna said: “The primary nourishment of man’s life is breaking his [bad] traits; otherwise, what should he live for?”