Maimonides

But his chief philosophical work, his 'Guide of the Perplexed' (Dalalat al Marin), carried him still further. and for centuries fairly divided the Jewish camp into two parties. The battle between the Maimonists and anti-Mai monists waged fiercely in Spain and Provence.

In the 'Guide of the Perplexed' Maimoni des has also produced a work which was °epoch-making in Jewish philosophy. It is the best attempt ever made by a Jew to combine philosophy with theology. Aristotle was known to Maimonides through Al-FarAbi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna) ; and he is convinced that the Stagyrite is to be followed in certain things, as he is that the Bible must be followed in others. In fact, there can be no divergence be tween the two; for both have the same end in view,— to prove the existence of God. The aim of metaphysics is to perfect man intellec tually; the same aim is at the core of Talmudic Judaism. Reason and revelation must speak the same language; and by a peculiar kind of subtle exegesis — which provoked much opposi tion, as it seemed to do violence to the plain wording — he is able to find his philosophical ideas in the text of the Bible. But he is care ful to limit his acquiescence in Aristotle's teach ings to things which occur below the sphere of the moon. He was afraid of coming into contact with the foundations of religious belief, and of having to deny the existence of wonders. The Bible teaches that matter was created. and the arguments advanced in favor of both the Platonic and Aristotelian views he looks upon as insufficient. The Jewish belief that God brought into existence not only the form but also the matter of the world, Maimonides looks upon much as an article of faith. The same is true of the belief in resurrection. He ad duces so little proof for this dogma that the people of his day were ready to charge him with heresy.

Maimonides is able to present 25 ontological arguments for his belief in the existence, unity and incorporeality of God. What strikes one most is the almost colorless conception of the Deity at which he arrives. In his endeavor to remove the slightest shadow of corporeality in this conception, he is finally led to deny that any positive attributes can be posited of God. Such attributes would only be and any such uaccidentia" would limit the idea of oneness. Even attributes which would mere ly show the relation of the Divine Being to other beings are excluded; because he is so far removed from things non-Divine, as to make all comparison impossible. Even exist ence, when spoken of in regard to him, is not an attribute. In his school language, the °essentialp of God involves his We have therefore to rely entirely upon nega tive attributes in trying to get a clear concept of the Deity.

If the Deity is so far removed, how then is he to act upon the world? Maimonides sup poses that this medium is to be found in the world of the spheres. Of these spheres there are nine: °the all-encompassing sphere, that of the fixed stars, and those of the seven planets)) Each sphere is presided over by an intelligence which is its motive power. These intelligences are called angels in the Bible. The highest in telligence is immaterial. It is the nous poietikds, the ever-active intellect. It is the power which gives form to all things and makes that which was potential really existent. °Prophecy is an emanation sent forth by the Divine Being through the medium of the active intellect, in the first instance to man's rational faculty and then to his imaginative faculty. The lower

grade of prophecy comes by means of dreams, the higher through visions accorded the prophet in a waking condition. The symbolical actions of the prophets are nothing more than states of the soul.* High above all the prophets Mai monides places Moses, to whom he attributes a special power, by means of which the active intellect worked upon him without the media tion of the imagination. The psychological parts of the present in a Jewish garb the Peripatetic philosophy as expounded by Alexander of Aphrodisia. Reason exists in the powers of the soul, but only potentially as latent reason (nous Istilikos). It has the power to assimilate immaterial forms which come from the active reason. It thus becomes ac quired or developed reason (noes epatetos); and by still further assimilation it becomes gradually an entity separable from the body, so that at death it can live on unattached to the body. In ethics Maimonides is a strong par tisan of the doctrine of the freedom of the will. No one moves him, no one drives him to cer tain actions. He can choose, according to his own inner vision, the way on which he wishes to walk. Nor does this doctrine involve any limitation of the Divine power, as this freedom is fully predetermined by the Deity. But Mai monides must have felt the difficulty of squaring the doctrine of the freedom of the will with that of the omniscience of God; for he entrenches himself behind the statement that the knowledge of God is so far removed from human knowl edge as to make all comparison impossible. Again, in true Aristotelian style, Maimonides holds that those actions are to be considered virtuous which follow the golden mean between the extremes of too much and too little. The really wise man will always choose this road; and such wisdom can be learned; by continued practice it can become part of man's nature. He is most truly virtuous who has reached this eminence, and who has eliminated from his own being even the desire to do wrong.

The daring with which Maimonides treated many portions of Jewish theology did not fail to show its effect immediately after the publica tion of the 'Guide.' His rationalistic notions about revelation, his allegorizing interpretation of Scripture, his apparent want of complete faith, in the doctrine of resurrection, produced among the Jews a violent reaction against all philosophical inquiry, which lasted down to the times of the French Revolution. Even non Jews looked askance at his system. In Mont pellier and in Paris, his own Jewish opponents, not content with having gotten an edict against the use of the master's writings, obtained the aid of the Church (for the 'Guide' had been translated into Latin in the 13th century), and had it publicly consigned to the flames. But all this was only further evidence of the power which Maimonides wielded. The Karaites cop ied it; the Kabbalah even tried to claim it as its own. Many who were not of the house of Israel, as Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Mag nus, acknowledged the debt they owed the Span ish rabbi; and Spinoza, though in many places an opponent, shows clearly how carefully he had studied the (Vols. I-II, Berlin 1907-10).