🔊66 ליקוטי אמרים: פרק כ-3

(5) To illustrate from the soul of a human being:
When a man utters a word,13 Hebrew text should read דבור instead of דבר. this utterance in itself is as absolutely nothing even when compared only with his general “articulate soul,” which is the so-called middle “garment,”14 Of the three garments: thought, speech, and act. namely, its faculty of speech, which can produce speech without limit or end;15 Physical incapacity (or death) does not limit the soul’s potential capacity for speech, which is intrinsic to it. all the more when it is compared with its so-called innermost “garment,” namely, its faculty of thought, which is the source of speech and its life-force, not to mention when it is compared with the essence and entity of the soul, these being its ten attributes mentioned above,16 Ch. 3. viz., chochmah, binah, daat (chabad), and so on, from which are derived the “letters” of thought that are clothed in the speech when it is uttered. For thought can as much be defined in terms of “letters” as speech, except that in the former they are more spiritual and refined.

(6) But the ten attributes—chochmah, binah, daat (chabad), and so forth—are the root and source of thought, and, prior to their being clothed in the garment of thought, still lack the element of “letters.”

(7) For example, when a man suddenly becomes conscious of a certain love or desire in his heart, before it has risen from the heart to the brain to think and meditate about it, it has not yet acquired the element of “letters”; it is only a simple desire and longing in the heart for the object of his affection.

(8) All the more so before he began to feel in his heart a craving and desire for that thing, and it is as yet confined within the realm of his wisdom, intellect, and knowledge, that is, the thing is known to him to be desirable and gratifying, something good and pleasant to attain and to cling to, as, for instance, to learn some wisdom or to eat some17 Hebrew text should read איזה instead איזו. delicious food. Only after the desire and craving have already found their way into the heart, through the stimulus of his wisdom, intellect, and knowledge, and then ascended once more back to the brain, to think and meditate on how to translate his craving from the potential into the practical, with a view to actually obtaining that food or acquiring that wisdom—it is here that the so-called “letters” are born in his mind, such “letters” corresponding to the language of each nation, employing them in speech and thought about all things in the world.18 Continued in next chapter.