De Specialibus Legibus (lib. i‑iv)

If therefore any one, yielding to an insolent disposition, strikes out the tooth of his servant, that organ which is the minister and provider of those most necessary things, food and life, he shall emancipate him whom he has injured, because by the evil which he inflicted on him he has deprived him of the service and use of his tooth. "Is then," some one will say, "a tooth of equal value with an eye?"

"Each," I would reply, "is of equal value for the purposes for which they were given, the eye with reference to the objects of sight, the teeth with reference to those which are eatable." But if any one were to desire to institute a comparison, he would find that the eye is entitled to the highest respect among all the parts of the body, inasmuch as being occupied in the contemplation of the most glorious thing in the whole world, namely the heaven; and that the tooth is useful as being the masticator of food, which is the most useful thing as contributing to life. And he who strikes out a man’s eye does not hinder him from living, but a most miserable death awaits the man who has all his teeth knocked out.

And if any one meditates inflicting injury in these parts on his servants, let him know that he is causing them an artificial famine in the midst of plenty and abundance; for what advantage is it to a man that there should be an abundance of food, if the instruments by which he may be enabled to make use of it are taken from him and lost, through the agency of his cruel, and pitiless, and inhuman master?

It is for this reason that in another passage the lawgiver forbids creditors to exact from their debtors a molar tooth or a grinder as a pledge, giving as a reason that the person who does so is taking a man’s life in pledge; for he who deprives a man of the instruments of living is proceeding towards murder, entertaining the idea of plotting even against life.

And the law has taken such exceeding care that no one shall ever be the cause of death to another, that it does not look upon those who have even touched a dead body, which has met with a natural death, as pure and clean, until they

And again, in the case of persons who have gone into the house in which any one has died, the law enjoins that no one shall touch them until they have both washed their bodies and also the garments in which they were clothed, and, in a word, it looks upon all the furniture and all the vessels, and everything which is in the house, as unclean and polluted;

for the soul of a man is a valuable thing, and when that has quitted its habitation, and passed to another place, everything that is left behind by it is polluted as being deprived of the divine image, since the human mind is made as a copy of the mind of God, having been created after the archetypal model, the most sublime reasoning.

And the law says, "Let everything which a man that is unclean has touched be also unclean as being polluted by a participation in that which is unclean." And this sacred injunction appears to have a wide operation, not being limited to the body alone, but proceeding as it would seem also to investigate the dispositions of the soul,

for the unjust and impious man is peculiarly unclean, being one who has no respect for either human or divine things, but who throws everything into disorder and confusion by the immoderate vehemence of his passions, and by the extravagance of his wickedness, so that everything which he touches becomes faulty, having its nature changed by the wickedness of him who has taken them in hand. For in like manner the actions of the good are, on the contrary, all praiseworthy, being made better by the energies of those who apply themselves to them, since in some degree what is done resembles in its character the person who does it.