Note 18 — THE THIRTEEN PRINCIPLES OF OUR CREED. (continued 3)

Maimonides (The Guide, xxx.) says in reference to this question: “You should also know the dictum of our Sages—‘All the beings of the work in the beginning (‏מעשה בראשית‎) were created in their full height, their fully developed reason, and endowed with the best of properties.’ Note this, for it involves an important principle.—The work of the Creation went on for six days; every day brought to light a new force, a new result of a creative action, but on the seventh day ‘God declared18 the work which He had done as finished,’ as endowed with the properties and forces required for their further development” (The Guide, I. lxvii.).