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759 AIMONIDES
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6, 89 ____. --- - - -
i. . A PAPER READ BEFORE THE PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF
THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
; - ANN ARBOR, MICH., JANUARY I9, 1890
BY
RABBI LOUIS GROSSMANN, D.D.,
ſ Author of “ JUDAISM AND THE scIENCE OF RELIGION”
- New York AND London
G. P. PU TN A M'S SONS
Čhe #mitherbother §ress
I890



CO l'YRIGHT BY
LOUIS GROSSMANN
1890
The ſknickerbocher pregg, ſhew 1}ork
Printed and Bound by -
G. P. Putnan’s Sons
se
MAIMONIDES.
BEFORE entering upon the presentation of
my theme, I beg you to have indulgence with
the amateur manner in which I shall deal with
it. I am not trained sufficiently in speculative
matters, and I feel that, when I accepted the
honoring invitation to lecture before this
learned society, I assumed a responsibility
beyond the measure of my strength. But the
name of Maimonides is dear to me, and my
love for this master-mind emboldens me to at-
tempt to speak in his behalf, especially in view
of the fact that he is referred to mostly only
incidentally, and that his philosophy is rarely
a special topic. I flatter myself, therefore,
that my tentative description will not be taken
amiss. I bespeak for my subject the interest
which it deserves, and for myself your kind and
lenient judgment.
It is my intention to sketch in as terse a
manner as I can a few of the most striking
features of the philosophy of Maimonides. I
I
2 - Mažmonides.
am sure I need not premise that it is not pos-
sible to report, respecting any of the mediaeval
philosophers, a system in the strict sense of
the word. They are more or less discursive,
and the most of them are committed to the
advocacy of some special matter, and hence
their speculation is clogged and unwieldy.
Maimonides is hampered by the foible of his
age. You cannot read a page of the “More
Nebuchim " without feeling a regret at the
spectacle of this Prometheus in Jewish litera-
ture bound to the rock of dogmatism.
In a rough estimate, we may class him
amongst philosophers of religion. He means
to show that a reconciliation between religion
and philosophy is possible. But the Bible is
to him still an oracle, which ought in all cases to
yield the right response. Be it remarked here,
however, that Maimonides is more susceptible
to suggestions coming from textual criticism
than, perhaps, the majority of Spanish-Jewish
writers, with the exceptions of the Kimchi's
and more especially of Abraham ibn Esra.
Maimonides does not hesitate to abandon the
traditional version of the Bible when it comes
into conflict with what is proved to be other-
wise incontrovertible. It was a dictum of his
: that reason must be the test of faith; nothing
that contradicts reason can be an object of
| belief, or can form a part of valid religion.
Maimonides. 3
We have here an anticipation by six centuries
of the “Kritik der reinen Vernunft.” He can-
didly confessed that he would willingly have
rejected the biblical account of creation if
Aristotle had succeeded in proving conclusively
the eternity of matter. In this sense he has
frequently recourse to a kind of exegesis which
is extremely interesting, and which would form
no unimportant datum in a history of the
efforts toward rational interpretation of the
Bible. His advice to novices in dialectic
studies is: never to be deceived by the literal-
ness of the biblical text. For it is evident, he
says, that there has been made popular a cer-
tain mode of divine portraiture (called techni-
cally anthromorphism and anthropopathism)
which, on the face of it, is nothing short of
blasphemy. (This is not to be charged to the
authors of the Bible so much as to the want of
critical discernment in the readers.)
This part of Jewish philosophy is really
foreign to the subject we have in hand, and
I will therefore pass it over. Our attention
is to be turned not to what was the position
of Maimonides regarding the Bible. He was
a leader in mediaeval Jewish exegetics and
hermeneutics, but we wished simply to show
in retrospect how Maimonides stands related
in this matter to his predecessors. The matter
is incidental merely to the special question
4. Mazzmozzales.
which Maimonides had set himself to deter-
mine: How is Judaism related to metaphysics?
The exposition of biblical doctrine was merely
the point of departure. None of the Jewish
philosophers had had the courage to seize upon
the matter with decision. Maimonides was
the first one to put the issue plainly and dis-
tinctly, and I may add, to his credit, in con-
trast with the scholiasts, who never thought it
serious enough to consider it at all. It is true
that, among Jewish thinkers, Saadja had, cen-
turies before Maimonides, treated of faith and
reason ; but more as to the contrast between
these than to demonstrate a reconciliation of
them. Saadja had, in fact, done ample service
when he subjected the dogmas of Judaism,
current and accepted in his day, to a searching
scrutiny and to the test of logic. Philo already
had sought the alliance of the Greek schools of
thought, that they might help to corroborate
revealed religion; and that it might become
evident that the Mosaic dispensation was in
keeping with what was the speculative fashion
of his day. But these previous essays were
radically different from the purpose of Maimon-
ides. His concern it was to dispose of the
hostility which it was alleged obtained essen-
tially between Mosaism per se and the cos-
mic philosophy of the Arabs. It was a more
troublesome matter than all these former ones
Al/azmaonides. 5
to reconcile revealed religion with the funda-
mentals of a discipline which was bold enough
to call itself a philosophy of the universe.
The opponents had become quite formidable.
There were no greater astronomers than the
Orientals, and no other study is likely to
induce sooner the apprehension of system vast
and grand than the science of the heavenly
bodies. In the face of this, to abide by a
dogmatic self-assertion for a few disjointed
subtleties would certainly have been futile.
Besides, the philosophy of Aristotle had be-
come naturalized on Arabic ground. Jews had
translated his works, and had opened them up
to the thinking world of Arabia, and, in this
roundabout way, finally to Christianity. Greek
philosophy had experienced a singular resusci-
tation. When the Occidental world had long
ceased to study, Arabia teemed not only with
faithful translations of Aristotle, but with
scholarly dissertations and annotations; even
later on the Christian world was stolidly con-
tent with mangled citations from these eastern
sources. It may be maintained for the Jews
that for this spread of philosophic study
they did the largest part. It is well known
that, in a large number of Moslem univer-
sities of Spain, they occupied presidential
positions and professors' chairs, and that
the aid of Jewish savants was sought for
6 Maimonides.
the schools which the Church felt called upon
—in rivalry with these seats of learning—
to establish for its vindication and fostering.
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas are to
be considered disciples of Jews, strange though
it may seem. Dr. Jost has made out a clear
case of the debt which Albertus Magnus owes
to Maimonides, and Emile Saisset, the eminent
professor of Catholic dialectics, goes so far in
his admission of the dependence of Thomas
Aquinas upon the same Maimonides that he
states: “The More Webuchim is the forerunner
of the Summa of Aquinas.” Even in Eng-
land the revival and re-enforcement of scientific
study were drawn from Jewish sources. Friar
Bacon is a pupil of a Jewish Rabbi, and
among the earliest professors at Oxford were
Jewish teachers of mathematics, astronomy,
and medicine. I need not refer with any addi-
tional emphasis to the fact that during the
Middle Ages, nearly all, if not all, the body
physicians to Kings, Emperors, popes and
potentates were Jews, amongst them our
Moses Maimonides. I mention it beside the
other less gratifying fact that this distinction
was bought by the Jews at a heavy price. The
prominence of the Jewish practitioners and
teachers aggravated the ill-will of the populace,
and it was made an occasion for much vindic-
tiveness. -
Maimonides. 7
The many-sided intellectual ambition of the
Jews helped to preserve for Europe Aristotle,
the master of philosophy. It was a service, for
the want of which, it may be, the discipline of
the schools would have been useless. The
version of Church doctrine received by it the
admirable consistence and severe uniformity—
attributes for which the history of the Catholic
Church stands pre-eminent. Aristotle is the
backbone of the scholiasts. Though Plato
had been an earlier favorite of Christianity,
it was felt later on that the new faith needed
no more mere poetic exhilaration. To that
Platonism, in its pure phase, and Neo-plato-
nism, much more recondite, amounted. The
idealism of Plato, as well as the fantastic va-
garies of Philonic logos-dreamery, could never,
it was felt soon after the consolidation of the
separate churches, serve as a material subven-
tion. The Church, in that stage of its life, need-
ed a substructure of absolutism. A late attempt
to foist Hegelianism upon Christianity has
proved that the time has gone by when ideal-
ism can bear upon Christian apologetics. He-
gelianism had to go, just as Platonism had to
yield to Aristotelianism.
It must be remembered that Maimonides
did not fail in sufficient insight in this matter.
The paramount concern of his mind was, that
by the philosophy of the absolute to deter-
8 Maimonzales.
mine that the unity and continuity, not merely
popular but fundamental, between the biblical
and the post-biblical phases of Judaism could
be established. He knew that that could
be consummated only by a method of con-
straining logical evidence. Aristotelianism had
been classical before the time of Maimonides;
but he was the first to see utility in the current
authority, and most especially the first to
undertake the proof of the identity between
natural religion and philosophy. I say natural
religion, though I do not wish to intimate that
Maimonides used the term in the modern sense.
But he eliminates priestly accretion so much
from Mosaism, pure and simple, that we are
justified in saying that he must have conceived
a generic kind of religion, or a simple primitive
faith. In all his references to traditional forms
and practices, he shifts, too persistently not to
be intentional, from a philosophic to the theo-
logic position. I put in evidence for this two-
fold meaning of religion in Maimonides the
order and sequence of the subjects as they
follow one another in the “More Nebuchim.”
Abarbanel, the masterly commentator and ex-
pounder of the “More,” has established that
most clearly. The breaking up of the concept
of religion into original and traditional con-
stituents, was novel; it naturally encountered
opposition. Jehuda Halevi contravened it
Mažmonzales. 9
in his now famous “Cusari.” Judaism, this
poet-philosopher maintained, has had its
fit exposition wholly neither by biblical au-
thorities alone, nor by the light which the
peripatetic school could throw upon these.
It has had its exemplification and its only
faithful portraiture in history. We are bound
to acknowledge that by this recognition of the
significance of history as incontrovertible testi-
mony, Jehuda Halevi is on the true path. But
upon the question which was at issue, of co-
ordinating revealed religion and derivative
religion, this has no bearing. He simply turned
his back upon dialectics peremptorily.
I cite the case of the “Cusari,” because it
presents another instance of the fact how seduc-
tive idealism is. The “Cusari" is thoroughly
Platonic, though modified by the additional
feature, not congenital with Platonism, that it
pleads for the significance of history. The
poetic attitude gave occasion and prestige to
Kabbalistic mysticism. Mysticism is the most
unfortunate of all phases in the history of
thought. This tide of the Kabbala, which
threatened to engulf rationalism amongst the
Jews, was stemmed by Maimonides. Immedi-
ately after his death, however, I regret to re-
port, this creation of diseased minds celebrated
its orgies in a grim “dance to death " of all
rational endeavor.
IO Mažmomezales.
I wish to mention here by way of parenthesis
another of the Platonists in Judaism, one, whose
name, for a long time a mystery, has been re-
stored by the learned M. Munk, the librarian
of the National Library and member of the
French Academy. It is Avicebron, whom also
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas quote
with deference, as we found them quoting Mai-
monides. His work is the “Fons Vitae,” and
his real name Salomo ibn Gebirol, the poet.
We have no occasion here to refer to this in-
teresting work more explicitly.
In attending to the reasons which Maimoni-
des proposed for a friendly intimacy between
philosophy and religion, we must remember
that the consideration of this subject will bring
us into quaint matters. These because of their
peculiar idiom may seem trivial. But it is just
that this phase of Maimonidian thought be de-
scribed in its own terminology. It lacks pre-
cision and Kantian vigor ; but it has served as
a vehicle in Jewish philosophy for more than
seven centuries and is current in it to-day.
The cosmology of that time was built upon
the doctrine of Emanation. One sphere gave
life to another sphere, and the graduation of
these, one into the other, made up a chain
of ascending dignity in spiritual personality.
Each sphere was ensouled. We cannot easily
think ourselves into this peculiar account of
Maïmonides. I I
universal life. Copernicus, Keppler, Newton,
and Laplace have happily made it strange
for us. Maimonides thought there were con-
centric circles of spherical layers around the
earth, one superimposed upon the other,
water, air, fire. The moon was another one
of these spheres. Above it those of Mercury,
Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and the
planets. Lastly, a fictitious sphere, which
revolves daily and drags all other spheres by
sympathy. We would suppose that this is
simply a mechanical explanation of terrestrial
and astral phenomena. But in this astronomy
the spheres are alive. Each is separately an
emanation from each preceding one, and the
rotation of each and of all is continuous and
eternal ; and since they are interdependent
and interact, and their rotation is well defined
and has a definite aim, each of them, because
of its distinctive purpose and movement, gives
evidence of a resident intelligence. These
separate intelligences are in essence different
one from the other. The diversity of phe-
nomena and the mutuality of their relationship
are thus accounted for by mythologic and,
indeed, light metaphysics. But it is still true
that modern philosophy and science have not
been able to clinch the matter more firmly.
Maimonides had to some extent emanci-
pated himself from this Mohammedan cos-
I 2 Mažmeonzales.
mogony. He was constrained, however, to
start from it, if he would hope to meet ob-
jections of another kind. The first chapter of
Genesis and the first of Ezekiel had long been
“mysteries of the Law,” the esoterism of the
Bible. Jewish thinkers had imported into
them matters at once foreign and contradic-
tory to the basal facts of Judaism. Kabbalistic
literature from beginning to end is a tediously
extravagant play with these two passages of
the Bible.
Maimonides protested against such perver-
sion and abuse of the fair name of biblical
authors. He would have nothing to do with
allegories and types and angelology. He ad-
mitted that the literal aspect of the passages
was inadequate and, considering their reputedly
eminent source, ludicrously inexact. He saw
the necessity of some sort of helpful comment.
He could under no circumstances suppose that
the materialistic description of the Divine Be-
ing could be meant seriously. Some apology
would have to be made for them.
In the first place, he emphasized, as very
proper and wise, the Talmudic maxim that the
Thora employs such diction as is likely to be
most communicative. Hence not much more
is to be made of instances in which the Bible
speaks of the eye of God, of the hand of God,
of the anger of God, and the like, than can be
Maimonzales. I 3
made out of any rhetorical phraseology which
is employed only to convey an abstract thought.
If any significance does attach to such conve-
nient terms, it lies most probably not in each
singly, but in the fact that certain figurative
appellations, with reference to God, used inva-
riably under similar circumstances, show that
there is a method in the use of them. To
subject such regularly and persistently applied
tropes to some scrutiny is legitimate work,
and by it we might arrive at a well-established
system of biblical interpretation. To such in-
vestigation Maimonides devoted the first part
of the “More,” and this may be regarded as
very humble prolegomena for a philosophy of
language.
Here then is the first opportunity in which
we can see the stand he took, from the side of
profane philosophy, regarding the widely dis-
tributed cosmogony and the much-cherished
fostering of mysticism, which the first had en-
gendered. The theory that the universe is a
chain of spherical agency, is an importation
into Judaism from foreign sources. Maasse
Bereshith and Maasse Merkabah were reduced
and eliminated by the logic of hermeneutics to
popular phrases which have no other signifi-
cance than to serve to make things more easily
intelligible. Thus rational Judaism got easily
rid of a very unwelcome intruder.
I4 Mazmeonezales.
The four categories of Aristotle provided
the constructive part of the “More.” I will
state it in this way: Every object, according
to Aristotle, is composite, being a bundle of
matter, form, efficient cause, and final cause.
Upon efficient cause Maimonides based the
cosmological proof of the existence of a God.
All phenomena, when traced even to the most
distant regression, are reducible to a primal
efficient cause. The contrast between “mat-
ter” and “form" furnishes another proof of the
existence of God. The ſtoc}rm ÖAm (the original
matter) logically presupposes a ſtpørov avoiſy
(an original force). This latter is isolated,
and to it no movement can be communicated.
This “Essence,” the First Form, then, is
God.
The ontological proof, unlike the more re-
cent modification of it, is based upon the fact
that the world is, as Aristotle would say,
wholly a flood of potentialities into actualiza-
tion. This transition from latent condition
into real state must proceed through some
supreme agent. This is all in strict obedi-
ence to Aristotelian authority. Maimonides
adopted additionally the following corrobora-
tive proofs.
The unity of God is an absolute one. If
there existed two divine beings this absolute-
ness would be logically impossible. On the
Maimonzales. I 5
one hand, they would have in common the fact
of divinity; on the other hand, there would
have to be some reason why we should dis-
criminate one from the other. To be what
they are they would have to be both common
and special, which of course excludes ultimate
condition. Again, it cannot be supposed that
two respectively exclusive deities voluntarily
divided authority between them, for wherein
shall the compromise lie P. In a division of
labor P Is not the fact of such an arrangement
an evidence of inferiority, since their absolute-
ness would be hampered P. At any rate the
yielding up of authority and power must have
some ground (for nothing can be ungrounded,
even in a God), and if there is a reason for it,
then evidently the reason is an extraneous
constraint; and this makes absoluteness ab-
surd.
I should like to be more detailed in the
demonstration which Maimonides gives of the
existence of a God ; as I should like also to
refer, more than by a passing notice, to the
care recommended by him regarding the pre-
eminently Jewish notion that God is one. The
philosophical aspect of God's essence must not
be confounded with a numerical commonplace.
Unity is referable to God only in the sense
that in Him no such coincidence of form and
matter takes place as is attributable, according
I6 Maïmonides.
to peripateticism, to transitory phenomena.
God is one, as the absolute essence.
But we must hurry on. In the philosophy
of Maimonides, perhaps more so than else-
where in Jewish literature, the relationship
between God and the world is conceived to
be intimate. God is the form of the world;
without His direction we could not conceive
how the world is continuous. He is not simply
a deus ex machina, who has once performed His
service of creation and is thence dismissed for
eternal indolence. Since God is “form,” every
origination of a terrestrial phenomenon springs
out of the bosom of His infinite opulence. Re-
garding this point Spinoza has been charged
with discipleship of Maimonides, which Prof.
Caird, in his “Life of Spinoza,” takes pains to
disprove. But there is no necessity to claim
more than that Maimonides is in this, as nearly
everywhere, on the ground of Aristotelianism.
Maimonides’ God is the sublimation of one of
too contradictory terms, which stand forever in
the world in irreconcilable opposition. Spi-
noza's Pan is one substance, out of which matter,
as its cognate, flows as water flows out of the
spring.
By the establishment of an ever-present God
(and an ever-active one) Maimonides has re-
deemed the Bible and Jewish theology (per-
haps all theology) of a very formidable charge.
Mazmeonides. I 7
I proceed to state it tersely. It is a common
practice to speak of God as the Creator; but
the nature of His present whereabouts and oc-
cupation is not made out. Granted that “ in
the beginning” He “created heaven and earth,”
where has He kept himself ever since, seeing
that the providential plan is getting along so
well in His absence P
Maimonides answers it thus: God is not
only the “form,” but also the “final cause " of
the world. In other words, He is not only the
occasion that brought the world into being, but
also their purpose. This teleological turn is
admirable, and it is vital. God did not make
things as they are simply in the capacity of a
mechanic, but as an artist, fitting the material
to its proper use in the economy of things.
This is a weighty word for optimism, that wis-
dom is resident in the world, and that the
world is preparing a glorious mise en scène of
the best.
In this sense, I mean my assertion that Mai-
monides has brought God and nature into im-
mediate and intimate relation, and has given
ample consolation for the disparaging events
of accident, in an abiding conviction that the
cosmos is normal and moral.
I wish now to pass to the consideration of
another theme of Maimonidian speculation.
We have so far considered God and nature.
2
I 8 Mažmonides.
Two other topics are still left to be presented.
The first is, what relation is there between man
and nature; and the second, what relation sub-
sists between God and man P. The question,
what position man has in the cosmos, was not
indigenous to mediaeval thought. The identity
of the physical basis in all organic beings was
recognized ; but a generic kinship of man and
animal, on the ground of soul-life, was incon-
ceivable to the school of Maimonides, for the
reason that the notion “organism " was not
known to them. Organism is not simply a
body which is ensouled, but a body which
possesses co-ordinated functions. It is true
they supposed the universe inspirited, but in a
mythological sense, or at least in a restricted
sense, something like the occasionalism of
Guelinx. To the conception of a possible
fundamental identity in the two aspects of
being (material and spiritual), none of the
Jewish thinkers, as none of the others, had
attained. Within the compass of physical life
man was scarcely more significant than any
other instance of atomic aggregate. The
eminence of the human species lay rather in
another direction; the soul of man was pre-
eminent among all other instances of life.
Within the psychology of the individual
there were (a) a vegetative soul; (b) a sensa-
tional soul; (c) an imaginative soul; (d) an ap-
Mažmonzales. I 9
petitive soul; (e) a rational soul. Similarly there
was the soul of the mineral, of the vegetable,
of the animal, world. The definition of soul
as preferred by Maimonides is : “The form "
of a thing is its soul. We can guess what the
soul of man would be.
And still we must not allow the impression
to gain upon us that Maimonides did not posit
anything with reference to the intrinsic dignity
of man. It is possible for man alone, he says,
to grow in strength of mental vision so that he
can come into communion with the absolute.
There is a gradation in the mental experiences
of man. At first his intellect is simply hy/ic.
The essence of things is hid from him, and the
potentialities are undiscovered because they
are hidden under a heap of materialities. He
knows phenomena only as separate and indi-
vidual things. His second stage is a growth.
Here the mind seizes upon abstracts. In the
highest status of mentality, finally, the mind
reverts upon itself through the intermediate
stage of perception and conception. Intellec-
tual susceptibilities, potentialities in the things,
apperception by the mind,-these three are
wedded by Maimonides into congenite unity.
The second question, how is God related to
man P and vice versa, brings us into the pres-
ence of the subject of morals, and, as a very
vital part, of the question of free will.
2O Mažmozzides.
Maimonides has treated the subject of free
will very definitely. He posits the following :
Man has been endowed with complete free-
dom to choose the good or the evil; he alone
of all creatures discriminates between these
by his reason, though the transition from a
mental attitude toward these ethical alterna-
tives does not entail that the corresponding
act and conduct must follow. Allow me to
insert here the remark that Maimonides em-
phasized the total separation of cognition by
the mind from the enlistment of the mind for
conduct, in opposition to the Dschabarites, a
Mohammedan sect. This sect had won danger-
ous prestige, and since it was a fatalistic School,
Maimonides desired to stem its ingratiating in-
fluence. Before Maimonides it had been be-
coming less offensive to believe that, inasmuch
as God is omnipotent, man could not, in any
way, assert himself. Volition was stigmatized
by the blighting frown of these fatalists.
“Do not think,” he says, “as some much
misguided people do, that God foreordains
immediately at the inception of a man's life
what he shall be, whether righteous or wicked ;
nay, every man becomes what he himself de-
termines to be. One is compassionate, the
other hard-hearted ; one is miserly, the other
liberal, according to his own predilection. There
is no constraint. According to a dictate from
Mažmeozzzales. 2 I
within, man chooses the way he will go. In
the sphere of moral selection the law of caus-
ality does not obtain as it does in nature, as if
the will of a man were simply the effect of
some cause to which he is implicitly subject.
The will of a man is primarily the source of all
his actions.”
“And,” he continues, “it is true an objection
might naturally obtrude itself upon our atten-
tion. If the human will is sovereign, in what
sense shall we comprehend the equally valid
truth that God is all-powerful ? Does not, by
the allowance to man of such self-mastery, the
divine omnipotence suffer much disdain, nay,
does it not become logically impossible P”
This is his answer: “The freedom of the
human will is itself a determination on the
part of God when he created man, just as is
the natural law, according to which, for in-
stance, light, gaseous bodies rise and heavy-
stuff particles sink. God has prescribed to
every thing its specific character. The dis-
tinctive character of the human being in this
sense is his free will '' (or as we would put it
perhaps more adequately, it is the mode, the
law of his being).
There is a second objection possible against
the conjunction of personal free will with
divine absoluteness. It might be justly con-
strued that free will, as it acts arbitrarily and
22 Mazmeonides.
occasionally, is inconsistent with and clashes
with divine omniscience. God fore-knows, if
in the sense of absoluteness he knows at all.
When, therefore, God knows events and doings,
it is tantamount, in divine logic, to their being
at the very moment objective realities. How
then can there obtain any alternatives for man
to choose from, if as soon as God has fixed it,
man is confined to what He has determined P
To this objection Maimonides replies rather
apodictically. The entire matter need not
trouble us. For the relation, as alleged, is
impossible. God is absolute, and of a positive
essence, like the absolute, we can say nothing.
God’s essence and God's cognition are not, as
in the economy of human mentality, antece-
dent and consequent, as if it were brain and
sensuous impressions carried to the brain. In
God unity admits of no discreteness. We know
nothing of how God knows, nor can we, in the
strict sense, say at all that God knows. For in
our terminology knowing presupposes faculty
for perception, conception, abstraction, and
naming. All these are phases of mind-activity,
where mind is distinct from and simply the tool
of a spiritual personality. But in the divine per-
son mind is not a subordinate instrumentality,
for the absolute has no such division of labor
in its make-up. We are, therefore, unable to
declare any thing as to God's omniscience, and
Mažmozzides. 23
we cannot say that human freedom is in any
way affected by the absolute essence of God.
In this way Maimonides disposes of the
difficulties, which are in the way of an harmo-
nization of the seeming opposites of free will
and divine fore-knowledge. But this matter
brings us close to another question not quite
so perplexing and insurmountable.
Whence comes responsibility ? If freedom
is an endowment, what is its exact nature ?
and what is its source P Freedom and liberty
are synonyms in the popular vocabulary, but
the distinction between them is very marked
when they are employed with some nicety.
Freedom is inalienable; liberty is a privilege.
Freedom is an ethical condition ; liberty a
civil grant. Freedom is a positive and lasting
property; liberty an immunity from incidental
obligation. Unlike liberty, freedom is an ha-
bitual state of soul. In this normal, original,
and continuous state there must be a personal
administration, an unconditional dictate, so
that the aim of the individual and the destiny
of the race are served best. This is the basis
of ethics. The consideration of it is eminently
a question of ethical philosophy. With Mai-
monides it is closely related to theology on
the one side, and, as we shall see, with science
on the other.
There is no question to the solution of which
24. Al/azmeonezales.
the philosopher ought to bring his acumen to
bear more directly than upon the question of
the origin, the character, the content of the
notion of right. I submit the proposition that
our mental discipline, the insight we have got
into history, the profound method of compari-
son of which we make use in all branches of
archaeology, language, mythology, and religion,
and finally the analysis of psychology, will
bring a supreme benefit. For they will make
more practicable a science of ethics. We make
shift practically with amateur morals. From
the aspect of scientific study we are content
with reassuring ourselves that our maxims,
customs, and habits do not run counter to our
critical sense, and that they have the authority
of history and the consensus of our cotempo-
raries. The faults common to divergent theo-
logical systems of morals can be subsumed
under the one radical one: they all beg the
question ; none is in alliance with the only re-
liable method of comparison, which, though as
yet in its infancy, will turn out to be the most
fertile and efficient. And let me add, there
can be no well substantiated classification of
moral precepts, except on the basis of psychol-
ogy. And by that I do not mean merely a
graduation of psychological phenomena, the
abstract study of soul-experiences. I have in
mind a treatment of the history of ethics, so
A/azmozzales. 25
that its manifold, divergent, and conflicting
facts will yield something besides a classifica-
tion of moral maxims. The history of culture
will show that there is a basal unity in the
logic, the psychology, and the morals of every
epoch and that these are mutually dependent
one upon the other. There is no such thing
possible as common-sense contradicting itself
anywhere.
But let us return to the consideration of
what were the principles of Maimonides re-
garding ethics. He shares with many others
the opinion that the ethics of the people are in
keeping with their experiences. Morals are to
him not much more than regulations. These
regulations are for the most part deductions.
Here is the way he arrives at a fundamental
criterion of what is virtue: The extremes of
human volition, he says, are not the measure
by which rectitude can be ascertained. The
ancients recommended the mean ; neither too
great an enthusiasm nor too heavy an indiffer-
ence. Just as the pendulum settles in its
proper place after Oscillating to both sides, so
moral qualities are compromises between the
swayings of the passions. Experience and the
discipline which comes from experience, and
what is still better self-discipline, these bring
habits in their train and lay the foundation for
moral self-sufficiency.
26 Al/azmozzides.
“In the matter of motives,” says he, “the
selection of which is relegated to the individ-
ual, there is no difference between religion and
philosophy. The restrictive influence of reli-
gion is not a pre-determinate, nor is it positive ;
it is simply corrective.” I strip the quaint lan-
guage of Maimonides and render it in modern
phraseology as approximately as I can. The
nature of religion is predominantly of a re-
straining force; it is prescriptive and origina-
tive only with reference to the details of worship.
The stimulating or rather the originative ele-
ments of conscious purpose come to the surface
rarely in a system of religion which is tinged
catechismically. Maimonides insists on a con-
ception of ethics, which shall not be confined
to a remedia/ purpose. It shall, he says, never
be an apology for either self-indulgence on the
one hand, or, on the other, for a super-refined
notion of self-negation or abnegation. I sus-
pect Maimonides here of a sly dig at the ascetic
schools of the Christianity of his day, and at
Mutazilite transcendentalism, which taught the
fiction of the sensuous kind of compensation,
notoriously Mohammedan. Asceticism, he says,
is a revulsion from the extreme of luxurious
sensuality, justly abhorred, the more since it is
cloaked under a dissimulating religiousness.
Transcendentalists, already in the day of Mai-
monides, as they do even in our day, made
Mazmeonezales. 27
virtue a contemplative, a speculative attitude.
The agent is to do the virtuous act for virtue's
sake. If it were allowed to lay open the
mechanism of such philosophic virtuousness,
it would be tantamount to a yearning after
an ideal, to a sort of poetry. This ideal of
pure morality is not an inner force, but an
externality, which allures because of its fas-
cination. Maimonides insists on it that the
source of the pure act lies within the man and
that the analysis of motives will prove it.
Moral force is resident within the agent, and is
not dependent upon an alluring fiction outside
of him. A man is morally good in proportion
to the personal contribution he has made in
the effort. There is a combat between self-
consciousness and organism—or as Maimonides
puts it, an opposition obtains between man
and sin. But the virtuous man is such only
if his consciousness has had something to do
with the selection of the act. Still this struggle
between the mental factors and the physical
factors of the organism is not a hostile opposi-
tion, but a parting off and a balancing. And
this affects mainly only the non-essential mat-
ters, such as, for instance, ceremonialism and the
proprieties are. They are an “After-moral,”
artificial and subventional, in contrast with
spontaneity, original and basal.
It may not be apparent how in this Maimoni-
28 Maimonzales.
des follows Aristotle. But in the principle
of the Mean, as the desideratum of moral
integrity, Maimonides agrees with more phi-
losophers than the Greek. Even in the most
recent phase of ethical philosophy, the sub-
sumption of ethical rules has not gotten farther
than crowding them under the experiential
maxim of the golden mean. But Maimonides
regarded the compromise of selfishness and
love, the two contradictory states of morals,
as representing more an art of ethics than a
science of ethics. On this account he felt the
need of a farther analysis of motives. If there
are actually various psychological factors in
the determination of a motive, it cannot be
supposed that these are mental phenomena
in a melée with passions, but kindred facts of
mind. Why I should rather do this than that,
is not determined by my personal authority
over against physical demands, but because I
contrast by an intuitive logic two unequal,
though similar motives. Thus Maimonides
maintains his position among the idealists,
and has swept the charge of theology from
him. I am anxious to put this clearly, for
this position of Maimonides as to ethics has
been endorsed by all later Jewish philosophers.
I mention as the most significant Bachja ibn
Pakuda,--whose “Choboth Haleboboth '' car-
ries this principle of the mental—I should say
Mažmozzides. 29
spiritual—character of moral motives as far as
it can be carried legitimately, viz., to constrain
as unessential, though from the legislative
point of view they may be serviceable and even
occasionally necessary, the abandonment of
many injunctions and prohibitions which have
the endorsement of tradition, but are not
entailed by the fundamental principle of pure
morals.
Maimonides gave direction to Jewish philos-
ophy far beyond the immediate compass of
Mosaism. He had furnished criteria for later
phases of Jewish thought.
In the subject we have in hand just now, I
will allow myself to add that it is a conven-
tional view, which has gone into literature to a
regrettable extent, that Judaism has continued
in its teachings regarding ethics in a monoto-
nous way ever since its inception. In one
respect I will not deny it, namely as to specific
regulations and practices. But as to the aspect
of ethics as a whole there has been no modi-
fication. From Moses to Moses Maimonides,
and from this Moses to Moses Mendelssohn,
all matters pertaining to religion, as well as to
morals, were referred to psychology in the last
instance. An abidance in this attitude I do
not consider a want of growth ; for I believe
that beyond the psychological key there is no
better. The eventful history of the Jews has
3O Al/aimeon2des.
not affected nor modified the original meaning
of person and of relationship. It may have
entailed and forced upon the Jews a deleterious
depression of the emotions. And in so far as
sentiments react upon the person and compli-
cate the original disposition, we may be able
to notice certain evidences of what bigotry did
cause; and this may account for the legalism
of Moses and for the casuistry of the Rabbis.
But the conception of morals in the abstract
and philosophic sense was always that they
were essentially intuitive. ©
I said above that Judaism maintained con-
tinuously an original psychological conception
of person and relationship. I repeat it now,
because I wish to advert to the next subject,
which, in the philosophy of Maimonides,
naturally follows from a scientific view of
morals. I mean the state. Maimonides main-
tains that as soon as we shall be able to give a
precise account of morals in the individual, we
shall have come nearest to the disposal of the
question how sociality originates. Man, he
says, is by nature gregarious (ſto\{t1ſtov 365ov,
Adom M’dini b'teva). He is referred to his
fellows by the demands of his person. I add,
by your indulgence, that this need of fellowship
from the organic side of the individual carries
in germ every other element for a scientific
apology for the state. Nature here hints only,
Maimonides. 3 I
and the history of the race brings forth the pat-
ent fact that spiritual communion is necessary.
But I must continue. Man is naturally social,
and he is dependent upon various and mutually
differing relationships with fellows to make his
life possible, even in the elementary matters.
I find in this a suggestion of the economic
principle of division of labor, though I scarcely
wish to claim that Maimonides knew of politi-
cal economy as a science. The political con-
dition of his time admitted of no such notion.
Politics and statecraft and the arts of govern-
ing were relegated to some few privileged
ones, and the thought of sociology was ex-
ceedingly remote. Not even this had dawned
upon them, that irresponsible royalty might
be subjected to criticism. But Maimonides
recognized the interdependence of man upon
men, and the diversity of characters as a neces-
sary condition for the moral status of the
individual.
But it must not be supposed that the mutu-
ality of men makes impossible the distinction
of some one or some few, above the mass of
mediocres. Leadership is not a voluntary
assumption on the part of one person nor an
enforced yielding up on the part of the people.
Sovereignty and genial guidance are essential,
not institutional. As much as the individual
needs society, so society needs the individual.
32 Mazmeonezales.
If society were simply an aggregate of single
men, it would fail to respond to the demands
of humanity. The highest human powers are
in the service to secure the consistence and
unity of society. This is a view of hero-
worship upon the evidence of history of which
I know no other defender except Emerson.
Geniuses are not lent for a time. Those who
lead the humanities of the ages are not out of
time and place. They are natural products and
natural causes. Even though we cannot lay our
fingers upon the pulse of their creative powers,
they are logically necessary. Society and his.
tory, the experiences, the shocks, the amenities,
the monotonies, the exaltations, the thousand-
fold agencies and patiences of men, have their
centre and polarity in genius and talent. No
theory of the history of culture is adequate un-
less it has room for what is currently termed
exceptional because obtrusive. No history of
culture is scientific unless it shows that the
birth, career, and death, failure and success
of leaders, is as normal a phenomenon and
as traceable to social ultimates as the large
movements themselves. This is more than a
mere forecast on the part of Maimonides, for
though he is undeniably prejudiced in favor
of Mosaism, it is a very thoroughgoing view of
his. We are so occupied with the worth of
our heroes as magnificent persons, that we
Maimonides. 33
forget that even such magnitudes might be
subservient, subservient to a profound plan
in which they are only tools. No history of
civilization has yet been written except in a
discursive manner. Epochs and occurrences
in the life of peoples and leaders are treated
as if they were so many plants which have
vegetated in turn. Of a graduation of historic
facts, how one occurrence plays into the other,
shades off one into the other, each a requisite
antecedent and a necessary consequent, all
history without a break, continuous from first
to last, from now as far as the certainty of law
will carry us, on that method no one has yet
constructed the true philosophy of history. It
redounds to the credit of Moses Maimonides,
that, despite the shortcomings of his time as
to scientific introspection, despite the absence
of any historic sense in his day, he still has
a presentiment that there obtains ordered
arrangement of human affairs in their large
Scope, and that this has an equally fit place for
the people and for genius. The genius is the
prophet. Law, i. e., administration, is not ac-
cessory, but a divine institution. Legislation,
however, in the narrow sense of police
authority, though it is justly vested with exec-
utive power, still, in the presence of the supreme
facts of human nature, is an impertinence which
is tolerated because it is useful. Law, Maimon-
3
34 Mažmeozzzales.
ides contends, as the groundwork of society,
is only another expression of society's own
mode of being. I submit this as the teaching
of the Jewish Hugo Grotius: It is the right of
those who constitute the social compact to
protect themselves against individual violence,
inasmuch as such violence evidences a flagrant
perversion of the social instinct, and the
malevolent agent cannot be in a sound con-
dition. He lacks one of the attributes of
humanity.
The state is supreme in authority, not only.
because it encompasses all the members of the
community, but also because it is an efficient
agent in the curriculum of their moral disci-
pline. The order of importance in the three
departments of civic interests is: first, the
state, and consequently the special form of
government; second, economics per se ; third,
the spiritual matters, for these are what they
are only in direct proportion and analogy with
the other two. Both national prosperity and
national intelligence are dependent for their
resources and opportunities upon the character
of government and paternal guardianship of
the fostering state.
We see that Maimonides is indebted for the
positive character of his philosophy to his op-
position to the Mohammedan school of fatal-
ism. But he could not avoid falling himself
Maimonides. 35
into the snare of a more polished fatalism.
There is no clearer case of fatalism than the
scientific. Still it is only such by an extension
of the meaning of the word fatalism. There is a
fatalism of prefiguration, and there is another
fatalism, which has nothing to do with provi-
dential ukases. The activity or experience of
every thing in nature is within the lines which
the mode of the thing prescribes. This is
fatalism as little as is the logical constraint of
the term square, the sides of which must
always be equal and shorter than the diagonal.
Nothing can make the sides equal to the
diagonal. No amount of disdain can make
this second kind of scientific definiteness kin-
dred to Oriental fatalism. Maimonides must
have been aware of this distinction; and in the
matter of morals and of polity it is evident that
he was. There must be, he says, a reciprocity
between people and legislators on the ground
of the natural law.
I ought now to offer some slight exposition
of the doctrine of prophecy for which Mai-
monides is distinguished in Jewish literature.
But the subject is properly theological and is
so treated at length in the “More ”; and I
believe it is on this account irrelevant in a dis-
cussion of his philosophy in general. I may
say that the prophet is described by Maimoni-
des as a supremely endowed human being,
36 Maimonzales.
whose delicate sensitiveness is a fact of his con-
stitution, economic condition, and consequent
exhilaration or depression. Prophetic genius
is one of a class. But Maimonides reserves for
himself this limitation, that the genial endow-
ment in itself is a mystery. How far soever .
we carry the analysis, and however we feel the
pulse of that splendid life, we cannot fix upon
the element which makes it different from all
others. The prophet may be simply a rational
person, but what gives him the faculty of ex-
haustive insight and foresight, it must be
admitted, is simply an act of the will of God.
In a general review of the philosophy of
Maimonides it will be pardoned, I hope, if
matters dear to the student of the “More ”
have had insufficient attention. I will content
myself, in conclusion, to state that the Jewish
adage: “From Moses unto Moses there has
been none like Moses,” applied to Maimonides
most worthily. He holds an honored su-
premacy in Jewish philosophy.
It is to be noted, however, that in the
history of thought a period of rationalism
has generally been followed by a relapse into
mysticism, and that no single large movement
of liberalization and renaissance has been ex-
empt from this reversion. It was so in the
case of Maimonides. His successors were the
Rabbanites and Kabbalists. These endeavored
Mazzzzozzales. 37
with all the malice of their bigotry to stigma-
tize the “More.” The grave of Maimonides
was disgraced. He was excommunicated even
in death, and a few years after his death his
work, denounced by fanatics, was burned in
the market-place at Paris and Toulouse as
dangerous and heretical. The Inquisition,
with its prompt and most chivalric persuasion,
suppressed the study of all Jewish philosophy.
But all this could not avail. The pseudo-
graphs and forgeries of the “Kabbala,” of the
“Sohar,” etc., met with deserved obloquy,
while the “More ” has grown in respect and
reWeren Ce.
I cannot speak of his other works, such as
his’ work on logic (“Higgayan”), his codex
(“Yad Hachazakah"), which is the foundation
of all later elaborations of Jewish law. The
composition of the latter work would in itself
have been sufficient to secure to him enduring
fame in the history of Judaism. But I have
refrained from speaking of these for the reason
that they are foreign to a consideration of his
philosophy.
Maimonides may be designated as the Aris-
totle of Judaism. So Grätz calls him. Jewish
thought is exceptional in the history of relig-
ions, because it appropriates and domesticates
the world's thinking. Of this we have a striking
instance in the manner in which Maimonides
38 Mazmeonezales.
readily imported Aristotelianism into Jewish
philosophy. The universal presence of God
and the plasticity of the human soul, the kin-
ship of all life, the conviction that everywhere
is the throb of life and of thought, these are
the teaching of the Jew of Spain, of the Jew
to-day, and of the best in the world, and as
in the eleventh century so also in the more
promising nineteenth.
THE END.
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
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