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History of the Jews, Vol. 3 (of 6)
Maimuni's reputation was so great that the English king, Richard Cœur-de-Lion, the soul of the third crusade, wanted to appoint him his physician in ordinary, but Maimuni refused the offer.
His patron, the chief judge and vizir Alfadhel, acquitted him at about this time of a grave charge, for which, under a less mild Mahometan, or even a Christian judge, he would have incurred the penalty of death. The same Abulalarab Ibn-Moïsha who had befriended Maimuni in Fez, had come from Maghreb to Egypt, and when he saw Maimuni, whom he had known as a Mahometan, at the head of the Jewish community as spiritual chief, he appeared against him as an accuser, and averred that Maimuni had for a long time professed the religion of Islam, and consequently ought to be punished as a renegade. Alfadhel, before whose tribunal the accusation was preferred, decided rightly that the compulsory adoption of a creed could have no value, and, therefore, could involve no penalties (about 1187). In consequence of his favor with the vizir, Maimuni was appointed supreme head of all the Egyptian congregations, and this dignity descended in his family from father to son and grandson. It is certain that Maimuni drew no salary for this office, for nothing appeared to him more discreditable and sinful than to receive payment for the discharge of spiritual duties, or to degrade knowledge into a money-making business. He sought this prominent position not for himself, but for the sake of his co-religionists, in order to save them from injustice. It was through him that the heavy yoke of persecution was removed from the congregation of Yemen. When Saladin had once more wrested Jerusalem from the hands of the Christians, who had held it for nearly a century, he allowed the Jews to settle in the city of their fathers (October, 1187). And from all sides there came devoted sons to visit their mourning and forsaken mother. Possibly Maimuni was not unconnected with this act of noble-minded tolerance. Lastly, he endeavored to obtain for his brethren in faith precedence in the state over the Karaites, and gradually to oust the latter from their favorable position at court, so that many of them reverted to Rabbanism. This was accounted to Maimuni as a most meritorious deed in his time.
The higher Maimuni advanced in the esteem of his contemporaries, the more his extraordinary ability was acknowledged, and the louder his fame resounded, the more did the arrogant Samuel ben Ali, of Bagdad, feel himself belittled, and the more did he become filled with envy. Samuel accordingly took every opportunity to depreciate Maimuni's merit, and rob him of his fame. Samuel and his friends whispered to one another that Maimuni was by no means a strictly religious Jew, nor a true follower of the Talmud, and they spread many calumnies about him. Some mistakes which he had made in his youthful work, the Mishna Commentary, were used by these malevolent people with a view to brand him as ignorant of the Talmud, and without claim to authority in this province. Their idea of religion, as Maimuni said of them, consisted in guarding against the violation of precepts; but according to their view, good morals, humility, merely human virtues, in short, do not belong to religion. As the seed which Maimuni had scattered began to bear fruit, Samuel ben Ali and his allies took advantage thereof to lower the author in the eyes of his contemporaries.
In Damascus and Yemen there appeared religious teachers, who drew from Maimuni's writings logical conclusions which he himself did not care to deduce. As he strongly affirmed, and repeatedly insisted, that by the immortality of the soul a purely spiritual existence in another world was to be understood, whereas he passed over the resurrection of the dead as of only secondary importance, his disciples concluded that he was not thoroughly convinced of the resurrection, and forthwith began to teach that after death the body sinks into dissolution and decay, and that only the soul becomes elevated to a purely spiritual life. This liberal view clashed with explicit declarations in the Talmud, and consequently aroused general opposition. Samuel ben Ali was requested by some one in Yemen to give his opinion on this question of the belief in the resurrection. Samuel wrote a whole treatise upon it, with philosophical flourishes, in order to appear a worthy rival of Maimuni, and seized the opportunity of criticising the latter's writings, hoping to heighten the effect of the criticism by according partial praise to Maimuni. On another occasion, Samuel ben Ali directed a letter to Maimuni, in which, amid much flattery and fawning, he reproached him with having committed an error in interpreting the Talmud, which could scarcely have been made by a beginner, kindly adding that Maimuni must not fret himself about it. At the same time, he did not forget to promise graciously to take him under his protection against the congregation in Yemen. Maimuni replied with a heated letter, in which he showed his malicious opponent that it was he who had erred in the deeper conception of the Talmud. He also touched upon the secret attacks made against his great work from this quarter, some asserting that the book contained mistakes, others that it was superfluous, others, again, that it was dangerous. "You seem," Maimuni observed to him, "to reckon me among those who are sensitive to every word of blame. You make a mistake. God has protected me against this weakness, and I protest to you, in His name, that if the most insignificant scholar, whether friend or foe, would point out to me an error, I would be grateful for the correction and instruction." Although Samuel ben Ali was readily refuted by Maimuni, he still continued to spread the report that the latter was no Talmudist, and that his codex did not deserve the respect which it enjoyed. From another side, from Haleb, Mar Sacharya, a man of limited range of vision, and with a superficial knowledge of the Talmud, thinking himself eclipsed by Maimuni's pupil, Joseph Ibn-Aknin, worked with equal hostility against master and disciple. But, as the sage of Fostat had warm and disinterested adherents everywhere, Samuel ben Ali and his ally of Haleb were constrained to act cautiously. They organized an intrigue against him, into which they drew one of the two Exilarchs. Towards this cabal, Maimuni assumed an attitude of contemptuous indifference and unconcern, which altogether disarmed his opponents.
In spite of his collisions with the party of Samuel ben Ali, and his prodigious activity as a physician, which scarcely gave him time for study, he completed his religious philosophical work, "Guide of the Perplexed" (Moreh Nebuchim, Dalalat al Haïrin) in about 1190. This treatise became of extraordinary importance, not only for Judaism, but for the history of philosophy in the Middle Ages generally. Maimuni appears at the summit of his intellectual power in this work, and it contains the vindication of his profoundest convictions. The questions which the human mind starts ever anew, about the existence of a higher world, the destiny of our being, and the imperfection and evil of the earthly world, Maimuni sought to answer in a manner which was at that time considered convincing. The doubts which the thinking Jew may conceive of the truth of his hereditary religion, he endeavored to remove in a persuasive manner. He, whose thoughts were ever directed to the loftiest subjects, could with justice assume the character of guide to the perplexed and wavering. The external form of this epoch-making work would make it appear that the author had elaborated, for his favorite disciple, Joseph Ibn-Aknin, of Fez, separate treatises on important points which had disquieted and tortured the latter. But it was actually dictated by the desire to express clearly his philosophical conception of the world, and his views of the place which Judaism finds in it, and thoroughly to analyze their mutual relation.
Maimuni was, on the one hand, firmly convinced of the truth of the Aristotelian philosophy, as the Mahometan philosopher Ibn-Sina and others had formulated it. On the other hand, Judaism was to him a body of truths not less irrefragable. Both seemed to him to have the same conclusion and a common aim. Philosophy recognizes as the principal of all essences one indivisible God, the governor of the world. Judaism likewise teaches with emphatic asseveration the unity of God, and abhors nothing more thoroughly than polytheism. Metaphysics knows no higher aim for man than that he should perfect himself intellectually, and work his way up to the highest knowledge. Judaism also, even Talmudical Judaism, places understanding and knowledge, the understanding of God, at the head of its precepts. If the truth which the human mind in the fulness of its power evolves from itself, and the revelation which the Deity vouchsafed to the Israelitish nation on Sinai, resemble each other in beginning and end, then their separate parts must correspond with each other, and be as one and the same truth, arrived at in different ways. Judaism cannot be in contradiction with philosophy, as both are emanations from the divine spirit. The truth which God has revealed must also agree with that which lies in the human reason, since the latter is a power originating from God, and similarly all truths which metaphysical thinking can bring to light must exist in the revelation – that is, in Judaism. Hence, Maimuni believed that originally, besides the written revelation in the Pentateuch, there were also communicated to the greatest of prophets oral doctrines of a philosophical character, which were transmitted by tradition to posterity, and which were lost only in consequence of the troubles and afflictions which the Israelites experienced in the course of ages. Traces of this old Israelitish wisdom are found, according to Maimuni, in the scattered utterances of the prophets, and in the reflections of the Agada. When, therefore, the thinking Jew borrows the truths of Greek philosophy, and adopts the theories of Plato and Aristotle, they are not altogether strange elements to him, but only a reminder of his own forgotten treasure.
The whole universe, which must be considered as a single organic whole, consisting of spheres suspended over one another working in harmony, is nothing more than the realized thoughts of God, or rather than the ideas of God ever tending to realization. He continually imparts to it new forms and shapes, and implants order and regularity in the world. Everything is arranged therein in accordance with a final purpose. The Greek philosophy, it is true, assumes that the universe shares in the eternity of God; but it can neither irrefutably prove the eternity of the world, nor remove any of the difficulties which oppose the acceptation of the original existence of the universe. The doctrine of Judaism is much more reasonable, that the world had a positive beginning, and that time itself, which, indeed, is a form of the world and its motion, is not without beginning, but was called into being by the determining will of God.
The organically formed universe, created and made to cohere by God, consists of a series of entities of different degrees. Next to the Deity are the pure spirits, which are simple, and not composed of matter and form, and consequently partake most of the divine nature. Their necessary existence is proved philosophically, because many phenomena in the universe best admit of explanation through them. These pure spirits, these "forms free of matter," Judaism and Holy Writ call "angels." Among them must be assumed a spirit or angel who is the originator of thoughts or ideas, the active world-spirit or creative reason (Sechel ha-Poel).
In the degree next to the pure spirits are entities which must certainly be considered as composed of matter and form, whose matter, however, is not heavy and coarse, but of an ethereal nature. These ethereal entities are the heavens and the brilliant world of stars, which possess an ever uniform motion, and are therefore not subject to the change of genesis and dissolution, but revolve in the firmament in constant brightness and with unbroken regularity. These form and influence the lower circle of entities. The stars are divided into four spheres – into the sphere of the fixed stars, of the moving stars (planets), of the sun and the moon. These spheres must be considered as endowed with life and intellectual power. Below the sphere of the moon there exists a grade of entities which are generated from coarser matter, but are susceptible of form, shape, and motion. This is the world of the four elements, which are in their turn fashioned into four spheres, one above the other. Within these spheres are formed, through manifold evolutions, influenced by the world of stars, lifeless minerals, plants, self-moving animals, and men capable of intelligence.
But how is the influence of God upon this multiform universe to be understood? The changes cannot proceed immediately through Him. The animated orbs of stars, which are the cause of all transformations on earth, are not set in motion by God, but are impelled towards Him in longing and love, in order to partake of His perfection, His light, and His goodness. Through this ardent striving of the heavenly bodies to God comes their regular revolution, and in this manner they cause all changes in the world below the moon, in the circle of genesis and dissolution, through the reception and loss of peculiar forms and shapes. This theory of God, of the universe, and the various motions of the different beings, Maimuni found indicated in Holy Writ and in many utterances of the Agada, but only in obscure allusions, as these writings, being designed for every one, not solely for the philosopher, could not and durst not, at the risk of occasioning gross misunderstanding, unveil the complete image of truth.
More important than the analysis of this conception of the world is Maimuni's presentation of his ideas on matters more nearly concerning mankind. Since God, the creator of the world, is perfect and all-good, the world cannot have been made otherwise than good, and in accordance with a purpose. "God saw that all was good," "From on high there comes no evil." The evils which exist in the world are not to be looked upon as the work of God, but merely as the absence of the good and the perfect, since gross matter is incapable of partaking of the good and the divine. God did not create sin, but sin arises from the nature of the coarse matter, which is defective in its constitution, and which can only receive and retain defectively that which is good. But this evil must be overcome. God has implanted in the soul of man, who is superior to all entities composed of gross matter, the capacity and instinct for knowledge. If the soul follows this instinct, it is assisted by the active reason which has been specially created for the purpose of opening up to the soul the source of the divine spirit, in order that it may understand the structure of the world and God's influence upon it, and that it may be enabled to lead a worthy life. Man can thereby raise himself to the higher degree of the angels, and can conquer the frailties which arise out of his material body. Through this elevation to the higher abode of thought and to moral purity, and through mastery of his animal nature, man by his own will acquires a soul; he makes himself a super-earthly being, he wins for himself the immortality of the soul, and becomes united with the all-governing world-soul. The possibility of gaining this highest degree is vouchsafed to man with his freedom of will.
And man can acquire and in a manner win God's special providence in the same way as he can acquire and win immortality through the action of his soul. For God's care extends only to what remains and endures. Even in the lower world of the four elements, this is felt in the preservation of the species, which by reason of their form and purpose are of a spiritual nature. If man raises himself to the degree of a spirit, if he becomes master over matter, the providential eye of God will not pass him over. And as man can gain for himself, through moral and intellectual discipline, an immortal soul, so he incurs the highest penalty if his spiritual light is quenched through a sinful life, and is crushed by his material nature.
Man has the power of acquiring still more; he can, through an ideal life, come to possess the prophetic faculty, if he opens his mind by constant communion with God to the influences of the active reason. But it requires on the part of man cultivation and concentration of the imagination, and on the part of God the emanation of His spirit. Since a lively, continually active imagination is the chief qualification for prophecy, it can develop only in a state similar to a dream, when the disturbing activity of the senses is relaxed, and the mind may freely resign itself to the influences from above. The prophesying of the prophets always occurred in a kind of dream. The Scriptural accounts of the actions and experiences of the prophets during their ecstatic condition, are not to be understood as being accounts of actual occurrences, but only of processes of the soul, as visions of the imagination. There are also different degrees of prophecy, according to the greater or less capacity requisite for them. Thus many miraculous tales in the Bible cease to appear supernatural and surprising, just as the hyperbolical style of the prophets is explicable on this theory. All this arises from the rule of the imagination and dream visions. Miracles are certainly not impossible. The same Creator who has established the laws of nature can also suspend them, but He does so only temporarily, that the old order may soon return, as when the waters of the Nile were changed into blood only for a short time, and the sea divided itself for the Israelites but for a few hours. The number of miracles in the Bible is, however, limited. Wonders are not, generally speaking, the means of verifying and confirming the declarations of the prophets; they must be proved by the prophecies themselves, and the fulfilment of what they predict. Miracles do not prove them true.
The most perfect of all prophets was that man of God with shining countenance, who brought to the world a religion which has exercised the profoundest sway over men's minds. The prophecy of Moses differed from that of later prophets in four essential points. He received the revelation without the mediation of another spiritual being, that is, without the influence of the active reason or of an angel, but communed with the Deity "face to face and mouth to mouth." Secondly, Moses communed with God, not in a dream, when all activity of the senses ceases, but the higher teaching was granted to him whilst he was in an ordinary frame of mind. Moreover, his being was not disturbed or dissolved by it, as in the case of other prophets when the spirit of God came upon them, but he could maintain himself under it. Finally, Moses was continually in the prophetic mood, whereas this power came upon other men of God only after longer or shorter intervals, and then only after careful preparation. Moses possessed this prophetic perfection only because, through the elevation of his mind, he had liberated himself from the tyranny of his senses, from desire, and even from his imagination, and had won for himself the degree of an angel, or of a pure spirit. All coverings which blindfold the eye of the human mind, and disturb its view, he tore off, and penetrated to the fountain-head of truth. He attained to a degree such as no other mortal has reached, and therefore he was able also to recognize the Deity and His will with the undisturbed gaze of a pure spirit. The truth of the highest Being irradiated him without intermediation, and in transparent clearness, without word or speech. That which he perceived at such a height he brought to his people as a religion, as a revelation, and this truth, radiating immediately from the divinity, is the Torah.
This revealed religion, originating from God, is unique, just as the mediator, through whom the truth was conveyed to man, is the only one of his kind. Being a divine doctrine it is perfect, and consequently there can be none which can abrogate its authority, and supersede it, just as there was none previous to it.
The divinity of the Torah is proved by its contents as by its origin. It contains not only laws and precepts, but also dogmas upon questions most important for man, and this two-fold character is likewise a mark to distinguish it at once from other codes and from other religions. Besides, the laws of the Torah all aim at a higher purpose, so that there is nothing in it superfluous, nothing unnecessary, nothing gratuitous. The design of the revelation brought down by Moses can be thus summarized: it was to promote the spiritual and physical welfare of those who received it, the one by inculcating correct ideas of God and His government of the world, the other by enjoining principles of virtue and morality. Maimuni made an attempt to show that the six hundred and thirteen laws of the Torah, or of Judaism, tend to establish a true theory as to the Deity and His relation to the world, to oppose false and pernicious opinions, to uproot false ideas, to remove wrong and violence, to accustom men to virtue, and finally to eliminate immorality and vice. Maimuni arranged all the obligations of Judaism under fourteen groups according to his scheme.
Maimuni's ideal labor, to raise Judaism to the height of a philosophical system, was of the most wide-spread effect. For the thinkers of his time, Maimuni's religious philosophy was, indeed, a "Guide of the Perplexed." For to these men, who were dominated by the same principles, whose thinking, on the one hand, was Aristotelian, and whose feeling, on the other hand, was Jewish, but who, nevertheless, were conscious of a deep gulf between their thinking and their feeling, nothing could have been more welcome than the discovery of a bridge which led from the one to the other. Many things which had appeared to them offensive, or at least trivial, in the Bible, received through Maimuni's ingenious manner of interpretation a higher importance, a deeper sense, and became clear to their understanding. To posterity his philosophical work was both stimulating and suggestive. Judaism, viewed in the light of Maimuni's philosophy, no longer appeared to Jewish students as something strange, belonging to the past, an extinct and mere mechanical system, but as something which belonged to themselves, a part of their consciousness, existing in the present, living in their thoughts and animating them. Jewish thinkers of all times after Maimuni have consequently had recourse to Maimuni's "Guide," have derived fruitful ideas from this source, and have even learnt from him to advance beyond his standpoint, and to combat him. And since in the end thinkers will always remain the guides and leaders of men, and the designers of their future, it can be said with justice, that Judaism is indebted to Maimuni for its rejuvenescence. So exclusively did he hold sway over men of intellect, that for a long time his work completely supplanted the systems of his predecessors from Saadiah to Ibn-Daud.
Maimuni's philosophical work, being written in Arabic, also exercised considerable influence beyond the Jewish world. He had, it is true, composed it entirely for Jews, and it is said, moreover, that he strictly enjoined that it be copied entirely in Hebrew characters, so that it might not fall into the hands of the Mahometans, and provoke animosity against his own people. He even cautioned his favorite disciple to use the utmost care in handling the chapters sent to him, so that they might not be misused by Mahometans and wicked Jews; but nevertheless this work became known to the Arabs, even in Maimuni's lifetime. A Mahometan wrote a profound exposition of the premises established by Maimuni to prove the existence of God. The chief founders of the Christian scholastic philosophy not only used Maimuni's work, which was translated into Latin at an early period, but for the first time learnt from it how to reconcile the diverging tendencies of belief and philosophy.
It ought scarcely to be urged against Maimuni, as a reproach, that, led by the philosophy of his time, he introduced strange and even incompatible elements into his system; that he raised, instead of the God of Revelation, who is in complete sympathy with the human race, with the Israelites, and with every individual, a metaphysical entity, who exists in cold seclusion and elevation, and who dare not concern Himself about His creatures, if His existence is not to evaporate as that of a mere phantasm. To this metaphysical God, he could attribute free-will only in a limited sense, whilst he practically denied Him altogether the possession of a complete personality. Judaism, however much Maimuni had its interests at heart, must be a loser by his system. As he could not accept the revelation of the Torah in the fullest sense as a communication of the Deity to His people, he had to consider the greatest prophet in the light of a demi-god above mankind. The ideal of a perfectly pious man, according to Maimuni's conception, is attainable by very few, and only by disciplined thinkers, who have the power of raising themselves to that rank through the long succession of degrees of knowledge, which are not within the grasp of every one. A merely moral and religious course of life is not sufficient, since God can be adored only by a soul endowed with philosophical intuition, and consequently only the few can arrive at immortality and future bliss, and have divine care vouchsafed them. Thus, according to Maimuni's theory, there are but very few elect. Lastly, Maimuni had to put a forced interpretation on verses of Scripture, in order to make them harmonize with the results of philosophical thought.
