Ten Essays on Zionism and Judaism

The Supremacy of Reason (To the Memory of Maimonides) (1904)

At last, after the lapse of seven hundred years,86 the anniversary of Maimonides’ death has been raised to the dignity of an important national day of memorial, and has been honoured throughout the Diaspora. In earlier centuries our ancestors do not appear to have remembered that so-and-so many hundred years had passed since the death of Maimonides; still less did they make the anniversary a public event, as we do now, although they were in much closer sympathy with Maimonides than we are—or, to be more correct, because they were in much closer sympathy with him than we are. They did not feel it necessary to commemorate the death of one whom in spirit they saw still living among them—one whose advice and instruction they sought every day in all their difficulties of theory and practice, as though he were still in their midst. In those days it was almost impossible for an educated Jew (and most Jews then were educated) to pass a single day without remembering Maimonides: just as it was impossible for him to pass a single day without remembering Zion. In whatever field of study the Jew might be engaged—in halachah,87 in ethics, in religious or philosophical speculation—inevitably he found Maimonides in the place of honour, an authority whose utterances were eagerly conned even by his opponents. And even if a man happened to be no student, at any rate he would say his prayers every day, and finish his morning prayer with the “Thirteen Articles”: how then could he forget the man who formulated the Articles of the Jewish religion?

But how different it is to-day! If a Jew of that earlier time came to life again, and we wanted to bring home to him as forcibly as possible the distance between ourselves and our ancestors, it would be enough, I think, to tell him that nowadays one may spend a great deal of time in reading Hebrew articles and books without coming across a single reference to Maimonides. And the reason is not that we have satisfactory answers to all the spiritual questions which troubled our ancestors, and have therefore no need for the out-of-date philosophy of Maimonides. The reason is that the questions themselves are no longer on our agenda: because we are told that nowadays men of enlightenment are concerned not with spiritual questions, but only with politics and hard, concrete facts. If Maimonides in his day accepted the dictum of Aristotle that the sense of touch is a thing to be ashamed of, we in our day are prone to accept the dictum that “spirituality” is a thing to be ashamed of, and nothing is worth notice except what can be touched and felt. When, therefore, we were reminded this year that seven hundred years had elapsed since the death of the man with whom the spiritual life of our people has been bound up during all the intervening period, the fact made a profound impression throughout the length and breadth of Jewry. It was as though our people were quickened by this reminder, and stirred suddenly to some vague yearning after the past—that past in which it was still capable (despite all the Judennot88) of looking upwards and seeking answers to other questions than those of bread and a Nachtasyl.

Be that as it may, Maimonides has become the hero of the moment and a subject of general interest. Many an address has been delivered, many an article has been written in his honour this year; but nobody, so far as I have seen, has yet used the occasion to unearth, from beneath that heap of musty metaphysics which is so foreign to us, the central idea of Maimonides, and to show how there sprang from this central idea those views of his on religion and morality, which produced a long period of unstable equilibrium in Judaism, and have left a profound impression on the spiritual development of our people. Since none else has performed this task, I am minded to try my hand at it. If even those who are expert in Maimonides’ system find here some new point of view, so much the better; if not, no harm is done. For my purpose is not to discover something new, but to rehearse old facts in an order and a style that seem to me to be new, and to be better adapted to present the subject intelligibly to modern men, who have not been brought up on medieval literature.

I

Can Maimonides claim to be regarded as the originator of a new system? This is a question which has exercised various authors; but we may leave it to those who attach importance to names. We may give Maimonides that title or not: but two facts are beyond dispute. On the one hand, the fundamental assumptions on which he built up his system were not his own, but were borrowed by him almost in their entirety from the philosophy of Aristotle as presented at second hand by the Arabs, who introduced into it a good deal of neo-Platonic doctrine. But, on the other hand, it is indisputable that Maimonides carried to their logical conclusion the ethical consequences of those assumptions, as the Greeks and the Arabs, with whom the assumptions originated, did not; and in this way he did say something that was new and hitherto unsaid, though it was logically implied in the fundamental principles which he took from other thinkers.

If, then, we would understand the ethical system of Maimonides, we must set clearly before our minds the metaphysical assumptions on which it was built. Those assumptions are so far removed from the philosophical and scientific conceptions of our own time that the modern man can scarcely grasp them. But in those days even the greatest thinkers believed these airy abstractions to be the solid truths of philosophy, rock-based on incontestable evidences. Hence it is not surprising that Maimonides, like the rest, was convinced beyond doubt that this “scientific” teaching was the uttermost limit of human understanding, and could never be changed or modified. So absolute, indeed, was his conviction that he went so far as to put this teaching in a dogmatic form, as though it had been a revelation from above.89

The following is an outline of his dogmas, so far as is necessary for our purpose:

“All bodies beneath the firmament are compounded of matter and form.”90 But “form” here is not “form as vulgarly understood, which is the picture and image of the thing”; it is “the natural form,” that is to say, the reality of the thing, “that by virtue of which it is what it is,” as distinct from other things which are not of its kind.91

“Matter is never perceived without form, nor form without matter; it is man who divides existing bodies in his consciousness, and knows that they are compounded of matter and form.”92 For since the form is the reality, by virtue of which the thing is what it is, it follows that matter without form would be a thing without a real existence of its own: in other words, a mere intellectual abstraction. And it is superfluous to add that form without matter does not exist in the sublunar world, which consists wholly of “bodies.”93

“The nature of matter is that form cannot persist in it, but it continually divests itself of one form and takes on another.” It is because of this property of matter that things come into being and cease to be, whereas form by its nature does not desire change, and ceases to be only “on account of its connection with matter.” Hence “generic forms are all constant,” though they exist in individuals which change, which come and go; but individual forms necessarily perish, since their existence is possible only in combination with finite matter.94

“The soul of all flesh is its form,” and the body is the matter in which this form clothes itself. “When, therefore, the body, which is compounded of the elements, is dissolved, the soul perishes, because it exists only with the body” and has no permanent existence except generically, like other forms.95

“The soul is one, but it has many different faculties,” and therefore philosophers speak of parts of the soul. “By this they do not mean that it is divisible as bodies are; they merely enumerate its different faculties.” The parts of the soul, in this sense, are five: the nutritive, the sensitive, the imaginative, the emotional, and the rational. The first four parts are common to man and to other animals, though “each kind of animal has a particular soul” special to itself, which functions in it in a particular way, so that, for instance, the emotion of a man is not like the emotion of an ass. But the essential superiority of the soul of man lies in its possession of the additional fifth part—the rational: this is “that power in man by which he thinks and acquires knowledge and distinguishes between wrong actions and right.”96

Thus the soul of man differs from the souls of other living things only in the greater variety and higher quality of its functions. In essence it is, like “the soul of all flesh,” simply a form associated with matter, having no existence apart from the body. When the body is resolved into its elements the soul also perishes with all its parts, including the rational.

This extreme conclusion had already been deduced from the teaching of Aristotle by some of his early commentators (such as Alexander Aphrodisius). There were, indeed, other commentators who, unable to abandon belief in the survival of the soul, tried to explain Aristotle’s words in conformity with that belief by excluding the rational part from the “natural form” and attributing to it a separate and eternal existence.97 But Maimonides was too logical not to see the inconsistency involved in that interpretation; and so he sided with the extremists, though their view was absolutely opposed to that belief in personal immortality which in his day had come to be generally accepted by Jews. Had he been content with that view alone, he would inevitably have gone back to the conception of primitive Judaism, as we find it in the Pentateuch: that immortality belongs not to the individual, but to the nation; that the national form persists for ever, like the generic form in living things, and the changing individuals are its matter. In that case his whole ethical system would have been very different from what it is. But Maimonides supplemented the teaching of Aristotle by another idea, which he took from the Arabs; and this idea, amplified and completed, he made the basis of his ethical system, which thereby acquired a new and original character, distinguished by its fusion of the social and the individual elements.

The idea is in substance this: that while reason, which is present in a human being from birth, is only one of the faculties of the soul, which is a unity of all its parts and ceases wholly to exist when the body ceases, yet this faculty is no more than a “potential faculty,” by virtue of which its possessor is able to apprehend ideas; and therefore its cessation is inevitable only if it remains throughout its existence in its original condition—in the condition, that is, of a “potential faculty” whose potentiality has not been realised. But if a human being makes use of this faculty and attains to the actual apprehension of Ideas, then his intellect has proceeded from the stage of potentiality to that of actuality: it has achieved real existence, which is permanent and indestructible, like the existence of those Ideas which it has absorbed into itself and with which it has become one. Thus we are to distinguish between the “potential intellect,” which is given to a human being when he comes into the world, and is merely a function of the body, and the “acquired intellect,” which a human being wins for himself by apprehending the Ideas. This acquired intellect “is not a function of the body and is really separate from the body.” Hence it does not cease to exist with the cessation of the body; it persists for ever, like the other “separate Intelligences.”98

Now since the form of every existing thing is that individual essence by virtue of which it is what it is and is distinguished from all other existing things, it is clear that the acquired intellect, which gives its possessor immortality, is the essence of the human being who has been privileged to acquire it: in other words, his true form, by which he is distinguished from the rest of mankind. In other men the form is the transient soul given to them at birth; but in him who has the acquired intellect even the soul itself is only a kind of matter. His essential form is “the higher knowledge,” “the form of the soul,” which he has won for himself by assimilating “Ideas which are separate from matter.”99

Thus mankind is divided into two species, the difference between which is greater than that between mankind as a whole and other kinds of animals. For man is distinguished from the rest of animate nature only by having a distinctive form: in quality his form is like the forms of other living things, seeing that in his case as in theirs the individual form perishes. But the distinctive form of the man who has the acquired intellect is distinct in quality; for it persists for ever even after its separation from matter. Its affinity is not with the other forms in the lower world, but with those “separate forms” in the world above.100

Thus far Maimonides followed the Arabs. But here the Arab philosophers stopped: they did not probe this idea further, did not carry it to its logical conclusions. Maimonides, on the contrary, refused to stop half-way; he did not shrink from the extremest consequences of the idea.

First of all, he defined the content and the method of the intellectual process by which man attains to “acquired intellect.” If we say that the intellect becomes actual and eternal by comprehending the Ideas and becoming one with them,101 it follows that the content of the Ideas themselves must be actual and eternal. For how could something real and eternal be created by the acquisition of something itself unreal or not eternal? Thus we exclude from the category of Ideas by the apprehension of which the acquired intellect is obtained: (1) those sciences which contain only abstract laws and not the explanation of real things, such as mathematics and logic; (2) those sciences which teach not what actually exists, but what ought to be done for the achievement of certain objects, such as ethics and æsthetics; (3) the knowledge of individual forms, which have only a temporary existence in combination with matter, such as the histories of famous men and the like. All knowledge of this kind, though it is useful and in some cases even necessary as preparation, is not in itself capable of making the intellect actual. What, then, are the Ideas by the apprehension of which the intellect does become actual? They are those whose content is true and eternal Being. This Being includes (going from lower to higher): (1) the generic forms of all things in the lower world, which are, as we know, constant; (2) the heavenly bodies, which, though compounded of matter and form, are eternal; (3) the forms which are free of matter (God and the separate Intelligences).102 All this relates to the content of the intellectual process; but there is also a very important definition of its method—a definition which is implied in the conception itself. The result must be achieved by the intellect’s own activity: that is to say, man must apprehend the truth of Being by rational proofs, and must not simply accept truth from others by an act of faith. For apprehension by this latter method is purely external; reason has had no active part in it, and therefore that union of the intellect with its object, which is what makes the intellect actual, is lacking.103

And now let us see what are the ethical consequences of this idea.

The question of the ultimate purpose of the universe is for Maimonides an idle question, because it is not within our power to find a satisfactory answer. For whatever purpose we find, it is always possible to ask: What is the purpose of that purpose? And in the end we are bound to say: “God willed it so,” or, “His wisdom decided so.” But at the same time Maimonides agrees with Aristotle and his school that the proximate purpose of all that exists in this world of ours is man. For in that “course of genesis and destruction” which goes on in all the genera of existing things we see a kind of striving on the part of matter to attain to the most perfect form possible (“to produce the most perfect being that can be produced”); and since “man is the most perfect being formed of matter,” it follows that “in this respect it can truly be said that all earthly things exist for man.”104

Now if man is the proximate purpose of all things on earth, “we are compelled to inquire further, why man exists and what was the purpose of his creation.” Maimonides’ view of the human soul being what it is, there is, of course, a ready answer to this question. The purpose of man’s existence, like that of all material existence, is “to produce the most perfect being that can be produced”: and what is the most perfect being if not the possessor of the “acquired intellect,” who has attained the most perfect form possible to man? The purpose of man’s life, then, is “to picture the Ideas in his soul.” For “only wisdom can add to his inner strength and raise him from low to high estate; for he was a man potentially, and has now become a man actually, and man before he thinks and acquires knowledge is esteemed an animal.”105

But if this is so, can we still ask what is the highest moral duty and what is the most perfect moral good? Obviously, there is no higher moral duty than this: that man strive to fulfil that purpose for which he was created; and there is no more perfect moral good than the fulfilment of that purpose. All other human activities are only “to preserve man’s existence, to the end that that one activity may be fulfilled.”106

Here, then, we reach a new moral criterion and a complete “transvaluation of values” as regards human actions in their moral aspect. Every action has a moral value, whether positive or negative, only in so far as it helps or hinders man in his effort to fulfil the purpose of his being—the actualisation of his intellect. “Good” in the moral sense is all that helps to this end; “evil” is all that hinders. If we determine according to this view the positions of good actions in the ethical scale, we shall find that higher and lower have changed places. At the very top, of course, will stand that one activity which leads direct to the goal—the apprehension of eternal Being by rational proof: that is to say, the study of physics and metaphysics. Below this the scale bifurcates into the two main lines of study and action. In the sphere of study, mathematics and logic have special moral importance, because knowledge of these sciences is a necessary preliminary to the understanding of Being by rational proof. Below them come subjects which have a practical object (ethics, etc.): for the actions with which these subjects deal are themselves only means to the attainment of the supreme end, and therefore the study of these subjects is but a means to a means.107 In the sphere of action, again, there are different degrees. Those human actions which have as their object the satisfaction of bodily needs have positive moral value only in a limited sense: in so far as they effectively keep off physical pain and mental distraction, and thus allow a man to give himself untroubled to the pursuit of the Ideas.108 Above these are actions which are connected with “perfection of character,” because that perfection is necessary for the attainment of true wisdom. “For while man pursues after his lusts, and makes feeling master over intellect, and enslaves his reason to his passions, the divine power—that is, Reason—cannot become his.”109 Hence even perfection of character has no absolute moral value, any more than other things which appertain to practical life. The moral value of everything is determined by its relation to the fulfilment of the intellectual purpose, and by that alone.110

Starting from this standpoint, Maimonides lays down the principle that virtue is “the mean which is equidistant from both extremes.”111 This principle is taken, of course, from Aristotle’s doctrine of virtue. But Aristotle did not set up a higher moral criterion by reference to which the mean point could be determined in every case. For him all virtue was really but a code of good manners to which the polite Greek should conform, being enabled by his own good taste to fasten instinctively on the point equidistant from the ugliness of the two extremes. Not so Maimonides, the Jew. He made this principle the basis of morality in the true sense, because he coupled with it a formulation of the supreme moral end. This moral end, for which the virtues are a preparation,112 compels us and enables us to distinguish between the extremes and the mean. For the extremes, being apt to impair physical health or mental peace, prevent a man from fulfilling his intellectual function; the mean is that which helps him on his road.113

But with all this we have not yet a complete answer to our question about the purpose of the existence of the human race as a whole. We know that the human race really consists of two different species: “potential man” and “actual man.” The second species, indeed, does not come into existence from the start as an independent species, but is produced by development out of the first. But this development is a very long one, and depends on many conditions which are difficult of fulfilment, so that only a few men—sometimes only “one in a generation”—are privileged to complete it, while the great majority of mankind remains always at the stage of “potential man.” Thus the question remains: What is the purpose of the existence of the great mass of men “who cannot picture the Idea in their souls”? For when we say that all material things exist for the sake of the existence of man, we do not mean that all other things are but a “necessary evil,” an evil incidental to the production of the desired end—in other words, merely Nature’s unsuccessful experiments in her struggle towards “the production of the most perfect being that can be produced,” like the many imperfect specimens of his art that the inexpert artificer turns out before he succeeds in creating one that is perfect. We cannot so regard them in the face of the evidence that we have of the wonderful wisdom of creative nature, which proves that the Artificer can do his work in the way best fitted to achieve his object. We must therefore assume that “things do not exist for nothing”; that Nature, in her progress towards the production of the most perfect being, has formed all other things for the benefit of that most perfect being, whether for food or “for his advantage otherwise than by way of food,” in such a way that the sum-total of things in the inferior world is not merely a ladder by which to ascend to the production of man, but also a means to secure the permanence of man when once he has been produced. It follows, therefore, that all the millions of men “who cannot picture the Idea in their souls” cannot be void of purpose, like the spoilt creations of the artist, which, not being suited to their object, are left lying about until they perish of themselves. There must of necessity be some advantage in their existence, as in that of the other kinds of created things. What, then, is this advantage? The answer is implied in the question. “Potential man,” like other earthly things, exists without doubt for the benefit of the “perfect being,” of “actual man.” In conformity with this view Maimonides lays it down that “these men exist for two reasons. First, to serve the one man (the ‘perfect’): for man has many wants, and Methuselah’s life were not long enough to learn all the crafts whereof a man has absolute need for his living: and when should he find leisure to learn and to acquire wisdom? The rest of mankind, therefore, exists to set right those things that are necessary to them in the commonwealth, to the end that the Wise Man may find his needs provided for and that wisdom may spread. And secondly, the man without wisdom exists because the Wise are very few, and therefore the masses were created to make a society for the Wise, that they be not lonely.”114

Thus the existence of the majority of mankind has a purpose of its own, which is different from that of the existence of the chosen minority. This minority is an end in itself—it is the embodiment of the most perfect form in the inferior world; whereas the purpose of the majority lies not in its own existence, but in the fact that it creates the conditions necessary to the existence of the minority: it creates, that is, human society with all its cultural possessions (in the material sense), without which it is impossible that wisdom should spread.

Thus we have introduced into ethics a new element—the social element.

For if each man could attain the degree of “actual man” without dependence on the help of human society for the provision of his needs, the moral criterion would be purely individual. Each man would be free to apply for himself the formula at which we arrived above:—all that helps me to fulfil my intellectual function is for me morally good; all that hinders me is for me morally evil. But if the attainment of the supreme end is possible only for the few, and is possible for them only through the existence of the society of the many, which has for its function the creation of the conditions most favourable to the production of the perfect being: then we are confronted with a new moral criterion, social in character. All that helps towards the perfection of society in the manner required for the fulfilment of its function is morally good; all that retards this development is morally evil. This moral criterion is binding for the minority and the majority alike. The majority, whose existence has no purpose beyond their participation in the work of society, can obviously have no other moral criterion than the social. But even the minority, though they are capable of attaining the supreme end, and have therefore an individualistic moral criterion, are none the less bound to subordinate themselves to the social criterion where the two are in conflict. For as society becomes more perfect, and the material basis is provided with less expenditure of effort, so much the greater will be the possibility of producing the perfect being with more regularity and frequency. Hence from the point of view of the supreme end of the whole human race—and that is the source of moral duty—the well-being of society is more important than that of an individual man, even though he belong to the perfect few.115

From this point of view all branches of man’s work which further the perfection of society and the lightening of the burden of life’s needs have a moral value, because they help more or less to create that environment which is necessary for the realisation of the most perfect form in the chosen few. Hence, to take one instance, Maimonides reckons the fine arts among the things that further the attainment of mankind’s end (though naturally beauty has in his system no independent value): “for the soul grows weary and the mind is confused by the constant contemplation of ugly things, just as the body grows weary in doing heavy work, until it rest and be refreshed, and then it returns to its normal condition: so does the soul also need to take thought for the repose of the senses by contemplating pleasant things until its weariness is dispelled.” Thus “the making of sculptures and pictures in buildings, vessels, and garments” is not “wasted work.”116

To sum up: society stands between the two species of men and links them together. For the “actual man” society is a means to the attainment of his end; for the “potential man” it is the purpose of his own being. The “potential man,” then, being in himself but a transient thing, which comes into being and ceases to be, like all other living things, must content himself with the comforting knowledge that his fleeting existence is after all not wasted, because he is a limb of the social body which gives birth to the immortal perfect beings, and his work, in whatever sphere, helps to produce these perfect beings.

Thus Maimonides gets back to the view of early Judaism, which made the life of society the purpose of the life of the individual, although at first he seemed to diverge widely from it in setting up the one “perfect man,” the possessor of “acquired intellect,” as the sole end of the life of humanity at large.

It is possible, indeed, at first sight to find a certain resemblance between Maimonides’ ethics and another doctrine which has recently gained such wide currency—the doctrine of Nietzsche. Both conceive the purpose of human existence to lie in the creation of the most perfect human type; and both make the majority a tool of that minority in which the supreme type is realised. But in fact the two doctrines are essentially different, and the resemblance is only external. In the first place, Nietzsche’s Superman is quite unlike Maimonides’ Superman in character. Nietzsche, Hellenic in spirit, finds the highest perfection in a perfect harmony of all bodily and spiritual excellences. But Maimonides, true to the spirit of Judaism, concentrates on one central point, and gives pre-eminence to a spiritual element—that of intellect. And secondly, the relation of his “actual man” to society is different from that of Nietzsche’s Superman. The Superman seeks an outlet for his powers in the world outside him; he strives to embody his will in action, and tolerates no obstacle in his path. He is therefore eternally at war with human society; for society puts a limit to his will and sets obstacles on his path by means of its moral laws, which have been framed not to suit his individual needs, but to suit the needs of the majority. Maimonides’ “actual man,” on the contrary, aims not at embodying his will in the external world, but at perfecting his form in his inner world. He demands nothing of society except that it satisfy his elementary wants, and so leave him at peace to pursue his inner perfection. He does not therefore regard society as his enemy. On the contrary, he sees in society an ally, without whose aid he cannot attain his end, and whose well-being will secure his own.

II

So far I have purposely refrained from bringing the religious element into the ethics of Maimonides, with the object of showing that he really based his view of human life on philosophy alone, and did not give way a single inch in order to effect a compromise between his philosophy and the religious ideas which were accepted by Jews in his time. None the less, there is no doubt that Maimonides was a religious man, and believed in the divinity of the Law of Moses: only his idea of the nature of religion, its function and its value, was a new one, and differed entirely from the accepted idea, because here also, in the sphere of religion itself, he remained faithful to those fundamental axioms on which he based his moral system.

Does philosophy leave any room for a belief in the existence of a revealed religion—that is to say, in a Law given to men by God through a supernatural revelation of himself to one or to many individuals? This question turns on another: Is the existence of the world independent of time and external cause, or is it the result of a creative act of God, as the Pentateuch teaches? According to the first view, “everything in the Universe is the result of fixed laws, Nature does not change, and there is nothing supernatural.” There is therefore no room for revelation, which upsets the order of nature, and “the whole teaching of Scripture would be rejected.” But if the world is the result of a creative act, and nature is consequently nothing but a revelation of the divine will, made in such time and place as God’s wisdom decreed, then it is no longer impossible that the divine will should one day reveal itself a second time in a supernatural manner. Hence, “accepting the Creation, we find that... revelation is possible, and that every difficulty in this question is removed.” For if we ask: “Why has God inspired a certain person and not another? Why has he revealed his Law to one particular nation, and at one particular time?” and so forth—“We answer to all these questions: He willed it so; or, His wisdom decided so. Just as he created the world according to his will, at a certain time, in a certain form, and as we do not understand why his will or his wisdom decided upon that peculiar form, and upon that peculiar time, so we do not know why his will or his wisdom determined any of the things mentioned in the preceding questions.”117

Maimonides gave much thought to the question of the creation of the world, and examined it from every side. He tried to ascertain whether there was anything conclusive in the evidences adduced by his predecessors in favour of the eternity of the world or of its creation; and he did not scruple to avow that if he had found a convincing proof of the eternity of the world he would not have rejected it out of respect for the Torah. But purely philosophic investigation led him to the conclusion that there was really no convincing proof one way or the other. Seeing then, he says, that “the eternity of the universe has not been demonstrated, there is no need to reject Scripture,” and we may believe in the creation theory, which has “the authority of Prophecy,” without any sin against our reason.118

But when once we have adopted the creation theory, revelation becomes possible, and there is nothing to prevent our holding the belief which our nation has accepted throughout its history: that at a definite point in time the Law was given to our people from heaven through the instrumentality of the chief of the Prophets, who received a unique inspiration from the divine source, and was taught what to tell his people in the name of God.119 It is not relevant (as we have seen above) to ask why this Law was given to us and not to others, at that particular time and at no other. But it is relevant to ask what is the purpose of this Law and what benefit it was meant to produce. For it can scarcely be supposed that God would interfere with the order of nature for no advantage or object; and if we cannot understand the working of the divine wisdom in every detail, we must and we can form for ourselves some general conception of the object for which the divine teaching was given to us and the way in which it can help men to attain their end.120

Now it is clear that the divine teaching, whether on its theoretical or on its practical side, cannot lead a man straight to his supreme goal—the raising of his intellect from potentiality to actuality. For this goal, as we know, is to be attained not by good actions, and not even by the received knowledge of truth, but only by the activity of the intellect itself, which must arrive at truth by the long road of scientific proof. And if religion cannot raise its followers to the stage of “actual man” in a direct way, we must conclude that its whole purpose is to prepare the instrument which is necessary for the attainment of that end: to wit, human society, which creates the environment of the “actual man.” The aim of religion, then, is “to regulate the soul and the body” of society at large, so as to make it capable of producing the greatest possible number of “actual men.” To this end religion must necessarily be popular: its teachings and prescriptions must be aimed not at the chosen few, who strive after ultimate perfection, but at the great mass of society. To this mass it must give, in the first place, true opinions in a form suited to the intelligence of the many; secondly, a code of morals, individual and social, which makes for the health of society and the prosperity of its members; and thirdly, a code of religious observances intended to educate the many by keeping these true opinions and moral duties constantly before their minds.121 In these three ways—the third of which is merely ancillary to the other two—religion aims at raising the cultural level of society, so as to make a clear road for the perfect individual: to provide him from the beginning of his life with an environment of correct opinions and good morals, and save him from the necessity of frittering away his strength in a twofold battle—against the evil conditions of a corrupt society, and against false opinions implanted in himself by that society. Religion is there to save him from this battle against corruption without and falsehood within: to secure that as soon as he shows the ability and the will to attain perfection he shall find favourable conditions prepared for him, and proceed towards his goal without let or hindrance.

This was how Maimonides conceived the function of the divine religion; this was how he was bound to conceive it, his philosophy being what it was. But as he was also persuaded by various reasoned proofs that the Law of Moses was the divine religion,122 he could obviously have no doubt that this Law must contain on its theoretical side the “true opinions” (that is, those philosophical opinions which he considered true), albeit in popular form, and on its practical side a moral doctrine for the individual and for society which was adapted to the end desiderated by his philosophy, together with the form of religious observance best calculated to educate society in the right opinions and the right morality.

It is at this point that Maimonides’ task becomes difficult. Armed with this a priori judgment, he comes to close quarters with the Torah: and he finds that in many matters, both of theory and of practice, it is, if taken at its face value, diametrically opposed to what his pre-conceived ideas would lead him to expect. The beliefs embodied in the Torah seem to be directly opposed to the most fundamental philosophical truths of Maimonides’ system; the actions prescribed in the Torah contain much that it is difficult to reconcile with the social purpose of the divine religion as conceived by that system. What course, then, was open to Maimonides? To compromise between philosophical and religious truth, as many had done before, was for him impossible. For every compromise means simply that both sides give way; and how could Maimonides, with his conviction that the attainment of truth by means of proof is the end of human existence and the only way to eternal happiness, give up one jot of this truth for the sake of another truth, of inferior value inasmuch as it has come to us only through tradition? Thus he has but one possible course. Necessity compels him to subdue religion absolutely to the demands of philosophy: in other words, to explain the words of the Torah throughout in conformity with the truth of philosophy, and to make the Torah fulfil in every part the function which philosophy imposes on it.

This necessity worked wonders. By dint of enormous labour Maimonides discovered various extraordinary ways of interpreting the Torah; with wonderful skill he found support for his interpretations in words and phrases scattered about the Scriptures and the Talmud; until at last he succeeded in making religion what it had to be according to his belief.

This is not the place to explain Maimonides’ methods of exegesis in detail. For us to-day they are but a sort of monument to the weakness of the written word in the face of a living psychological force which demands that “yes” shall become “no” and “no” be turned into “yes.” This psychological force led Maimonides to turn the “living God” of the Torah into an abstract philosophical conception, empty of all content except a collection of negations; to make the “Righteous Man” of Judaism a philosopher blessed with “acquired intellect”; to transform the “future world” of the Talmud into the union of the acquired intellect with the “active intellect”; to metamorphose the Biblical penalty of “cutting off” into the disappearance of the form when the matter is resolved: and so forth. All this he did in conformity with his “philosophic truth,” of which he refused to change one atom.123

So, too, with the practical side of religion. Only in a very roundabout way could practical religion be brought under the general principles which Maimonides deduced from his philosophy. The difficulty was especially great in the case of the laws of religious worship, many of which have no apparent educative value as a means of confirming true opinions and morality. But here also necessity did its work, and Maimonides managed to find educational “reasons” for all the religious laws, not excepting those which seem on the face of them actually to confirm false opinions and to arouse inclinations opposed to morality—such as, for instance, sacrifices and the accompanying rites.124 None the less, he was compelled after all his hard labour to lay down this strange axiom: that there is a reason for the commandments in a general way, but not for their details, these having been ordained only because there can be no universal without particulars of some kind or other.125

Maimonides had an easier task in bringing the moral laws of the Torah within his system. In themselves these laws demanded as a rule no heroic exegesis to show their utility for the social order: indeed, the Torah often emphasises this utility, which in any case is self-evident in most commandments of this class. But in arranging these commandments in order of moral value Maimonides was compelled to coerce religion by his characteristic methods into conformity with his system, according to which good actions—whether moral or religious—are of an inferior order, having no value except that of a necessary preparation of the individual and of society for the attainment of the supreme moral good, the perfection of intellect. This attitude of Maimonides towards moral actions, which we have met already as a philosophical postulate, is just as strongly maintained after such actions have been invested with a religious sanctity. Hence religion affects Maimonides’ philosophical ethics only to this extent, that it makes all the observances of religious worship a moral duty, equal in value to the other moral duties, because religious worship is one way of leading mankind to the attainment of the supreme moral good in the chosen individuals.

What, then, is the “divine religion”—that is to say, the teaching of Judaism—according to the system of Maimonides?

On its theoretical side it is popular metaphysics, and on its practical side social ethics and pædagogics. It cannot bring man to his ultimate perfection; its whole function is to regulate society—that is, the masses—in accordance with the requirements of the perfect man. Hence religion is not above reason, but below it: just as the masses, for whom religion was made, are below the perfect man. Reason is the supreme judge; religion is absolutely subordinate to reason, and cannot abrogate one jot of its decisions. For God, who implanted the reasoning faculty in man, that by it he might attain truth and win eternal Being, could not at the same time demand of man that he believe in something opposed to that very truth which is attained by reason, and is the goal of his existence and the summit of his happiness. Even if a Prophet works miracles in heaven and earth, and requires us therefore to believe that there has been prophetically revealed to him some “divine” truth which is opposed to reason, we must not believe him nor “regard his signs.” “For reason, which declares his testimony false, is more to be trusted than the eye which sees his signs.”126

But all this does not detract from the general and eternal duty of observing in practice all the commandments of the divine religion. Religion, like nature, is a creation of God, in which the divine will is embodied in the form of immutable laws. And just as the laws of nature are eternal and universally valid, admitting of no exception, though their usefulness is only general, and “in some individual cases they cause injury as well,” so also “the divine guidance contained in the Torah must be absolute and general,” and does not suffer change or modification “according to the different conditions of persons and times.” For the divine creation is “that which has the absolute perfection possible to its species”; and that which is absolutely perfect cannot be perfected by change or modification, but only made less perfect.127 Religion, it is true, was given through a Prophet, who received the divine inspiration; but when once it had been given it was placed outside the scope of creation, and became, like Nature after its creation, something independent, with laws which can be investigated and understood by the function of reason, but cannot be changed or abrogated by the function of prophecy. It may happen, indeed, that in accordance with the divine will, which was made an element in the nature of things when nature was created, the Prophet can change the order of the universe in some particular detail for a moment, so as to give a sign of the truth of his prophecy;128 and similarly the Prophet can sometimes abrogate temporarily some point of the Law, to meet some special need of the time. But just as the Prophet cannot modify or change completely any law of nature, so he cannot modify or change completely any law of the Torah. Nor can he, by his function of prophecy, decide between opposing views on a matter which is capable of different interpretations, because his opinion on a question of this kind is important by virtue of his being a wise man, and not by virtue of his being a Prophet, and it is therefore no more decisive than that of another wise man who is not a Prophet. And “if a thousand Prophets, all equal to Elijah and Elisha, held one view, and a thousand and one wise men held the opposite view, we should have to follow the majority and decide according to the thousand and one wise men and not according to the thousand venerable Prophets.” For “God has not permitted us to learn from Prophets, but from wise men of reasoning power and knowledge.”129

What I have said so far, in this section and the preceding one, is sufficient, I think, to give a clear idea of the fundamental beliefs of Maimonides as to the function of man and his moral and religious duties. But before we pass on to consider how Maimonides tried to make these ideas the common property of his people, and what mark his system has left on the development of Judaism, it is worth while to mention here that Maimonides himself has given us the essence of his system in a perfectly unmistakable form, by dividing men into various classes according to their position on the scale of perfection. He compares the striving of man after the perfection of his form to the striving of a king’s subjects “to be with the king in his palace”; and using this simile he finds in mankind six successive stages, as follows:—

1. Men who are outside the country altogether—that is, savages “who have no religion, neither one based on speculation, nor one received by tradition.” They are considered “as speechless animals.”

2. Men “who are in the country,” but “have their backs turned towards the king’s palace, and their faces in another direction.” These are “those who possess religion, belief and thought, but happen to hold false doctrines, which they either adopted in consequence of great mistakes made in their own speculations, or received from others who misled them. Because of these doctrines they recede more and more from the royal palace the more they seem to proceed. These are worse than the first class, and under certain circumstances it may become necessary to slay them, and to extirpate their doctrines, in order that others should not be misled.”

3. “Those who desire to arrive at the palace, and to enter it, but have never yet seen it.” These are “the mass of religious people; the multitude that observe the divine commandments, but are ignorant.”

4. “Those who reach the palace, and go round about in search of the entrance gate.” These are “those who believe traditionally in true principles of faith, and learn the practical worship of God, but are not trained in philosophical treatment of the principles of the Torah.” On the same level with them are those who “are engaged in studying the Mathematical Sciences and Logic.”

5. Those who “have come into the ante-chamber”—that is, “those who undertake to investigate the principles of religion,” or those who have “learnt to understand Physics.”

6. Those who have reached the highest stage, that of being “with the king in the same palace.” These are they “who have mastered Metaphysics—who have succeeded in finding a proof for everything that can be proved—who have a true knowledge of God, so far as true knowledge can be attained, and are near to the truth wherever only an approach to the truth is possible.”130

In this classification Maimonides sets forth his ethical system in plain terms, with perfect coldness and calm, as though there were nothing startling about it. We of the present day feel our moral sense particularly outraged by his cruel treatment of the second class—“those who happen to hold false doctrines”—though we can understand that a logical thinker like Maimonides, who always went the whole length of his convictions, was bound to draw this conclusion from his philosophical system. For that system regards “true opinions” as something much more than “opinions”: it attributes to them the wonderful power of turning the reasoning faculty into a separate and eternal being, and sees therefore in the opposite opinions a danger to life in the most real sense. But in Maimonides’ day the persecution of men for holding false opinions was a common thing (though it was done in the name of religion, not of philosophy); and even this piece of philosophic ruthlessness created no stir and aroused no contemporary protest. What did stir contemporary feeling to its depths was another conclusion involved in his classification: namely, “that philosophers who occupy themselves with physics and metaphysics are on a higher plane than men who occupy themselves with the Torah.”131 Whoever knows in what esteem our ancestors of that period held the study of the Torah will not be surprised that “many wise men and Rabbis” were driven to the conclusion that “this chapter was not written by the Master, or if it was, it should be suppressed, or, best of all, burnt.”132

Poor, simple men! They did not see that this chapter could not be either suppressed or burnt except in company with all the other chapters of Maimonides’ system, which led him inevitably to this extreme conclusion. But there were other men in Israel who saw more clearly, and actually condemned all the chapters to the fire. To them we shall return later.

III

The supremacy of Reason! Can we to-day, after the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, conceive how tremendous, how fundamental a revolution the phrase implied in the time of Maimonides?

We all know that the outstanding characteristic of the human mind in the Middle Ages was its negative attitude to human reason, its lack of faith in the power of reason to direct man’s life and bring him to the goal of real happiness. Reason was almost hated and despised as a dangerous tempter and seducer: it led men away from the pursuit of truth and goodness, and was to be eschewed by all who cared for their souls. Fundamental questions about life and the universe had to receive super-rational answers. The simpler and more reasonable the answer, the more suspect and the less satisfactory it was; the stranger the answer, the more violently opposed to sane reason, the more cordial was its welcome and the more ready its acceptance. The famous Credo quia absurdum of one of the Church fathers was the cardinal rule of thought for all cultured nations, Christian and Mohammedan alike. Nor had Judaism escaped the sway of this principle. Not only the mass of the people, but the leaders and teachers, generally speaking, believed in the literal sense of the Scriptures and the Talmud, even where it was plainly contrary to reason. The coarsest and crudest ideas about the nature of the divine power and its relation to men, and about the soul of man and its future in “the world to come”—ideas which reason cannot tolerate for a moment—were almost universally held; and even those learned in the Law staunchly maintained these ideas, because so they had found it written in Bible or Talmud, and that which was written was above reason, and no attention should be paid to that impudent scoffer. It followed naturally from this fundamental point of view that the important things in the sphere of morals were to know and to perform all that was written. The function of reason was not to understand life and the universe, but to understand what was written about life and the universe. The thing best worth doing for a Jew was to ponder on the written word and to work out its details, theoretically and practically, to infinity.133

No doubt some Jewish teachers before Maimonides had tried to introduce into Judaism more rational principles, which they had derived from Arabic philosophy. But these attempts only affected details; the cardinal principle remained untouched. Reason remained subordinate to the written word; its truths were still discarded for the higher truth of religion. The Gaon Saadiah, the greatest of the earlier Jewish religious philosophers, explains the relation of reason to religion by the following simile: “A man weighs his money, and finds that he has a thousand pieces.” He gives different sums to a number of people, and then, “wishing to show them quickly how much he has left, he says that he has five hundred pieces, and offers to prove it by weighing his money. When he weighs the money—which takes little time—and finds that it amounts to five hundred pieces they are bound to believe what he told them.” But there may be among them a particularly cautious man, who wants to find the amount left over by the method of calculation—that is, by adding together the various amounts distributed and subtracting their sum from the original amount.134 Religion, of course, is the weighing process, which gives us the truth at once, by a method which is direct and cannot be questioned. Reason corresponds to calculation: a cautious man with plenty of time may use it to establish a truth which has already been proved to him by the short and certain method of weighing. But obviously calculation cannot change the result which weighing has already given; and if there is any difference in the results, the weighed money will neither be increased nor diminished, and the mistake must be in the calculation. This way of regarding reason and its relation to religion was common to all the Jewish thinkers who laboured, before Maimonides, to reconcile religion and philosophy. They regarded their labour only as a necessary evil. They shouldered the burden because they saw that it had to be done; but in their heart of hearts they were wholly on the side of religion, and it never occurred to them to give reason precedence.135 In this respect they were like the Arabic religious philosophers; and like them they chose the philosophical views which confirmed their religious faith rather than those which were confirmed by reason. “They did not investigate,” writes Maimonides, jeering at “philosophers” of this kind, “the real properties of things; first of all they considered what must be the properties of the things which should yield proof for or against a certain creed.” They forgot “that the properties of things cannot adapt themselves to our opinions, but our opinions must be adapted to the existing properties.”136

If we remember that this was the general attitude of mind, we cannot help asking how it could happen that in such a period and in such an atmosphere Maimonides arrived at the doctrine of the supremacy of reason in its most uncompromising form. No doubt, if we care to be satisfied with any answer that comes to hand, we may say that Maimonides, starting out with a predisposition in favour of the Arabic version of the Aristotelian philosophy, and a sternly logical mind, could not stop half-way, or fail to see the logical consequences of Aristotelianism. But when we observe how, with a devotion far greater than that of his non-Jewish teachers, he set himself to develop and extend the idea of the supremacy of reason till it became a complete, all-embracing theory of life; and when we remember also his love for the teachings of Judaism, which ought to have induced in him a disposition not to extend the empire of reason, but to restrict it: we are forced to confess that logic alone could never have produced this phenomenon. There must have been some psychological force, some inner motive power, to make Maimonides so extreme and uncompromising a champion of reason.

We shall discover what this motive power was, I think, if we take account of the political position of the Jews at that time.

It was a time when religious fanaticism was rife among the Moslems. In many countries to profess another religion meant death, and large numbers of Jews, who could with difficulty change their place of abode, accepted Mohammedanism, though but outwardly. One of these countries was Southern Spain, the birthplace of Maimonides, who was a boy of thirteen when religious persecution broke out in that country. It may or may not be true, as recent historians maintain, that he and his father and the whole family changed their religion under compulsion: the question has not yet been definitely settled. But there is no doubt that even if he was saved by some means from an open change of faith, he was at any rate forced to conceal his Judaism, for fear of oppression, so long as he lived in Spain and in Fez (where religious persecution first started, and fanaticism had its stronghold). It was only in Egypt that his troubles ceased, and when he reached Egypt he was already about thirty years of age. This, then, was the terrible position in which Maimonides spent his years of development. He was surrounded by lying and religious hypocrisy; Judaism had to hide from the light of day; its adherents had to wear a mask whenever they came out of their homes into the open. And why? Because Mohammed had called himself a prophet, had performed miracles, according to his followers, to win their faith, and by virtue of his prophetic power had promulgated a new Law and revealed new truths, which all men were bound to believe, although they were contrary to reason. This state of things was bound to make a profound impression on a young man like Maimonides, with his fine nature and his devotion to truth. He could not but feel every moment the tragedy of such a life; and therefore he could not but become violently opposed to the source of religious fanaticism—to that blind faith in the truth of prophecy which relies on supernatural “evidence,” and despises the evidence of reason. It was this blind faith that led the Moslems to force the Jews into accepting the teaching of the new prophet; and it was this that led many of these very Jews, after they had gradually become accustomed to their new situation, to doubt of their Judaism and ask themselves why they should not be able to believe in Mohammed’s prophecy, just as they believed in that of Moses. If Moses had performed miracles, then surely Mohammed might have done the same; and how could they decide between the one teaching and the other with such certainty as to pronounce one true and the other false?137

These impressions, which were constantly influencing Maimonides’ development in his childhood and youth, were bound to swing him violently over to the other side, to the side of reason. Ultimately he was led to subject man—and God too, if one may say so—to that supreme ruler: because Judaism could trust reason never to allow any new prophet with his new teaching to work it harm. When once Judaism had accepted the supremacy of reason and handed over to reason the seal of truth, it would never again be difficult to show by rational proof that the first divine religion was also the only divine religion, never to be displaced or altered till the end of time; and then, even if ten thousand prophets like Mohammed came and performed miracles beyond telling, we should never believe in their new teaching, because one proof of reason is stronger than all the proofs of prophecy.138

Perhaps, too, Maimonides’ rationalism is traceable to yet another cause, which lies like the first in the situation of the forced converts of that period. These men were no doubt able to observe the Jewish law within their own homes; the Moslems did not, like the Christians later, invent an Inquisition to pry into every hole and corner. None the less, Maimonides himself makes it clear that the Jews were often compelled to break the commandments of their Law, when they could not observe them without arousing suspicion in the minds of the authorities. This naturally caused the unfortunate Jews great distress, and drove some of them to despair. What, they asked themselves, was the use of remaining true to their ancestral faith at heart, if they could not in practice keep clear of transgressions both great and small, and must in any case merit the pains of hell?139 It is reasonable, therefore, to suppose that this painful feeling also helped to lead Maimonides—though unconsciously—towards the doctrine of the supremacy of reason, which teaches that man’s “ultimate perfection does not include any action or good conduct, but only knowledge”140—thus implying that man may win salvation by attaining to true opinions, though he is sometimes forced in practice to transgress the commands of religion.

However that may be, whether for these reasons or for others, we do find that Maimonides had his system perfected and arranged in all its details even in his early days, when he first came out of his study into public life, and that he made scarcely any change in it from that time till the day of his death.141 All his efforts went to the propagation of his teaching among his people, and to the endeavour to repair by its means all the shortcomings which he found in contemporary Judaism.

These shortcomings were great indeed. Judaism, as Maimonides found it, was by no means fulfilling its function as “the divine religion.” It was not “true opinions” that the people derived from Judaism: on the contrary, they had come, through a literal acceptance of all that it taught, to hold false ideas about God and man, and had therefore by its means been removed still further from perfection. Even the practical duties of morality and religion could not easily be learnt by the people generally from their religious writings. For in order to deduce practice from theory it was necessary to navigate the great ocean of the Talmud, and to spend years on minute and tangled controversies—a task for the few only, not for the masses. Here, then, was an odd state of things. The whole purpose of religion was to improve society at large, to speak to the masses in a language which they understood; but if the masses could not understand the language of religion, and could learn from it neither true opinions nor practical duties, then religion was not fulfilling its function in society, and its existence was useless.

This state of affairs produced in Maimonides, while he was still young, an ardent desire to stand in the breach and make Judaism fit to fulfil the double function—theoretical and practical—which it had as the only “divine religion.” For this purpose it was necessary on the one hand to show the whole people, in a form suited to its comprehension, the “true opinions” contained in the Torah, and on the other hand to rescue the practical commandments from the ocean of Talmudic disputation and to teach them in a short and simple manner, so that they should be easily remembered and become familiar to the people.

But in those early days Maimonides had not the courage to strike out a new line and to present the whole content of religion in an entirely fresh manner in conformity with his philosophical system. Hence he chose a line which was already familiar, and decided to supply the need of his own age by the help of a book which in its time had been intended to fulfil a somewhat similar purpose—the Mishnah. Thus it was in the form of a Commentary on the Mishnah that he tried to give his contemporaries what they lacked: to wit, clear doctrine and a plain rule of practice. Wherever the Mishnah leaves a point in doubt, he gives the decision laid down in the Talmud; and wherever the Mishnah hints at some theoretical opinion, he takes advantage of the opportunity to explain the “true opinions.”142 This latter process was, of course, especially important to him; and he sometimes expatiates on the subject at much greater length than is usual in a Commentary of the ordinary kind.143 Thus he was able to introduce into his Commentary, besides a mass of scattered notes, complete essays on questions of faith and philosophy in the form of Introductions to different sections of the Mishnah.144

Maimonides gave a great deal of work to this Commentary, which he began and finished in his years of trouble and wandering. In the result he produced a masterpiece, which remains to this day superior to all later Commentaries on the Mishnah. But he did not achieve the principal object for which he took so much trouble: he did not make religion effective. His Commentary did not become widely known, and made no great impression; still less did it bring about a revolution in popular opinion, as its author hoped that it would. And it failed of its object on the practical as well as on the theoretical side. Many of the later laws, which have no basis in the Mishnah, could not be included in it; and those that were included were scattered about in no proper order, because the Mishnah itself has no strict order.

But as Maimonides grew older and reached middle life, years brought him wider knowledge and greater confidence in himself. This self-confidence gave him courage and decided him to approach his goal by another road. He would produce a work of striking originality, such as no Jew had ever produced before.

So he set to work on his Mishneh Torah. Instead of a Commentary on the Mishnah of R. Jehudah, Maimonides now produced a Mishnah of his own, new in content as in arrangement.145 Here he sets forth all the practical laws of religion and morality and all the “true opinions” in the form best adapted to the understanding of ordinary men, in beautiful and clear language and in perfect logical order. Everything is put in its right place; decisions are given without hair-splitting arguments; opinions are set out untrammelled by arguments or proofs. In a word, the book presents all that the divine religion ought to give in order to fulfil its function, and presents it in precisely the right manner.146

This time Maimonides was justified in supposing that he had fulfilled his duty to his people and his religion, and had attained the end which he had set before himself. Within a short time this great book spread through the length and breadth of Jewry, and helped considerably not only to make the practical commandments more widely known, but also to purify and transform popular religious notions. Views distinguished by their freedom and their antagonism to current religious ideas appeared here in the innocent guise of canonical dicta; and as they were couched in the language of the Mishnah and in the familiar terminology of the old religious literature, people did not realise how far they were being carried, but swallowed the new ideas almost without resistance. If the dose was accepted not as pure philosophy, but as religious dogma, that was precisely what Maimonides intended: for according to his system religion was to teach philosophical truth to the masses in the guise of “divine” truth which needed no proof.

But Maimonides’ work was not yet completed. In the Mishneh Torah he had reformed religion so far as its social function was concerned: that is to say, so far as the needs of the common people demanded. He had still to reform it from the point of view of the function of society itself: that is to say, to meet the needs of the chosen few. For the common people it was necessary to clothe philosophical truth in religious garb; for the few it was necessary to do just the reverse—to discover and expose the philosophical truth that lay beneath the religious garb. For this minority, consisting of those whom “human reason had attracted to abide within its sphere”—who had learnt and understood the prevailing philosophy of the time with all its preambles and its proofs—could not help seeing the deep gulf between philosophy and Judaism in its literal acceptation. It was impossible to hide the inner contradiction from such men by means of a superficial gloss, or to harmonise discrepancies of detail by a generalisation. What then should one of these men do if he were not only a philosopher, but also “a religious man who has been trained to believe in the truth of our Law”? He must always be in a state of “perplexity and anxiety.” “If he be guided solely by reason... he would consider that he had rejected the fundamental principles of the Law;... and if, instead of following his reason, he abandon its guidance altogether, it would still appear that his religious convictions had caused him loss and injury. For he would then be left with those errors [i.e., those derived from a literal interpretation of Scripture], and would be a prey to fear and anxiety, constant grief and great perplexity.”147

If we remember Maimonides’ conception of the “actualisation” of intellect, and how it obtains independent existence through understanding the Ideas, we shall see that he was bound to regard this perplexity of the “perfect individuals” as being in itself not merely something undesirable, but a grave danger from the point of view of the supreme end of mankind. For how could these perplexed men attain to the summit of perfection, to “acquired intellect,” if they doubted the truth of reason because it did not square with the truths of religion, with the result that subject and object could not be united in them and become a single, indivisible whole? If the divine teaching itself brings “loss and injury” to the chosen few, the harm that it does more than outweighs the good that it has done in improving the multitude and thus removing social obstacles from the path of the few.

This grave evil required a remedy; the “perplexed” had to be satisfied that they could devote themselves peacefully to the acquisition of the Ideas, without being disturbed by the thought that in so doing they were rejecting the fundamental principles of the Law. This was the task which Maimonides set himself in his last book, the Guide for the Perplexed. The book is in a way his own confession of faith; it shows his perplexed pupils the method by which he has succeeded in escaping from his own perplexity. After what has been said above, we need not here deal with this book at length. The “true opinions” which it contains have already been explained in outline; the method by which these opinions are discovered in the Torah has been broadly indicated, and the details are not essential to our present purpose. It does not matter to us how Maimonides subordinated religion to reason; the important thing is that he did subordinate it. From this point of view we may put the whole teaching of the Guide in a single sentence. “Follow reason and reason only,” he tells the “perplexed,” “and explain religion in conformity with reason: for reason is the goal of mankind, and religion is only a means to the end.”

Had Maimonides written the Guide before he wrote the Mishneh Torah, he would certainly have been pronounced a heretic, and his book would have made no deep impression either in the orthodox camp or in that of the doubters. The orthodox would have turned their backs on it and have striven to blot out its memory, as they did with so many other books which they thought dangerous to their faith; and the doubters would not have accepted its views as a perfect doctrine, but would have regarded it as merely an attempt on the part of one of their fellow-doubters to escape from his perplexity, and an attempt which in many details had failed and could not give entire satisfaction.

But in fact the Guide was written after the Mishneh Torah, when Maimonides was already considered the greatest exponent of the Law, and enjoyed an unequalled reputation throughout the Diaspora. Hence even the Guide could not dethrone him from his eminence. Willingly or unwillingly, his contemporaries accepted this further gift at his hands. The believers stormed and raged among themselves, but did not dare to attack Maimonides openly so long as he lived. The doubters welcomed the book with open arms; they did not stop to test or criticise, but drank eagerly of the comforting draught for which their souls had been thirsting. It was not some sophist, but the greatest sage in Israel, the light of the Exile, who went before them like a pillar of fire to illumine their path. How could they but be satisfied with such a guide?

But things changed when Maimonides’ death freed the zealots from the restraint of fear. A fierce conflict broke out about him, and raged for a hundred years. The religious leaders, long accustomed to ban every book that did not suit their views, could not possess their souls in silence when they saw, for the first time in Jewish history, that revolutionary books like the Guide and the Book of Science were spread abroad without let or hindrance, and were more popular and more esteemed by the people at large than almost any of the other books which the teachers and sages of Israel had placed in the treasury of Judaism.148 The details of this conflict are familiar to scholars, and it is not my intention here to write the history of that period. But it is worth pointing out that most of Maimonides’ opponents at that time did not recognise clearly the fundamental change which he had introduced into Judaism. No doubt they all felt that his teaching meant a complete revolution in the national outlook; but they did not all understand what was the pivotal issue of the revolution. For the most part they merely pointed to certain details in which they found heresy, such as the denial of resurrection, of hell and paradise, and so forth. Only a few of them understood that Maimonides’ teaching was revolutionary not because of his attitude on this or that particular question, but because he dethroned religion altogether from the supreme judgment-seat, and put reason in its place: because he made it his basic principle that “whenever a Scripture is contradicted by proof we do not accept the Scripture,” but explain it in accordance with reason.149

This emancipation of reason from its subordination to an external authority is the great and eternal achievement which has so endeared Maimonides to all those of our people who have striven after knowledge and the light. The theoretical system at which Maimonides worked so hard from his youth to the end of his life has long been swept away, together with the Arabic metaphysics on which it was based. But the practical consequence of that system—the emancipation of reason—remains, and has left its mark on the history of Jewish thought up to the present day. Every Jew who has left the old school and traversed the hard and bitter road that leads from blind faith to free reason must have met with Maimonides at the beginning of his journey, and must have found in him a source of strength and support for his first steps, which are the hardest and the most dangerous. This road was traversed not only by Mendelssohn, but also by Spinoza,150 and before and after them by countless thinkers, many of whom won golden reputations within Judaism or outside it.

S. D. Luzzatto’s criticism of Maimonides, on the ground that his views on the nature of the soul led to the degradation of reason in Jewish thought, is superficial. Maimonides, according to him, “laid down what we must believe and what we must not believe,” whereas before his time there was no rigid dogma, “and there was no ban on opinions to prevent each thinker from believing what he thought true.”151 Now this is not the place to show how far Luzzatto was from historical accuracy when he credited pre-Maimonidean Judaism with freedom of thought. To understand the true nature of that freedom we need only remember how Maimonides’ opponents—who were certainly faithful to the older Judaism—spoke and acted in the period of conflict. But as regards Maimonides himself, Luzzatto overlooks the fact that, while his psychological theory no doubt led him to regard certain opinions as obligatory, he placed the source of the obligation no longer in any external authority, but precisely in human reason. That being so, the obligation could not involve a ban on opinions. For as soon as other thinkers are persuaded that human reason does not make these particular opinions obligatory, they are bound, in conformity with Maimonides’ own system, to believe each what he thinks true, and not what Maimonides erroneously thought true. In other words: if we wish to judge Maimonides’ system from the point of view of its effects on Judaism, we must look not at the Thirteen Articles which he laid down as obligatory principles in accordance with that system, but at the one principle which underlies all others—that of the supremacy of reason. A philosopher who frees reason from authority in general must at the same time free it from his own authority; he cannot regard any view as obligatory except so long as it is made obligatory by reason. Imagine a man put in prison and given the key: can he be said to have lost his liberty?152

IV

Here ends what I wished to say about the supremacy of reason in Maimonides’ system; and here I might conclude this Essay. But I should like to add some remarks on another supremacy—on that of the national sentiment. In these days we cannot discuss the thought of one of our great men, even if there are seven hundred years between him and us, without wanting to know whether and to what extent his thought reveals traces of that sentiment which we now regard as the most vital element in the life of Judaism.

But this question really contains two different questions, which have to be answered differently so far as Maimonides is concerned. The first question is: Did Maimonides recognise the supremacy of the national sentiment in the spiritual life of his people, and allow it consciously and of set purpose an important place in the teaching of Judaism? The second is: Do we find traces of the supremacy of the national sentiment—as an unconscious and spontaneous instinct—in the mentality of Maimonides himself?153

The first question cannot be answered in the affirmative: the evidence is rather on the negative side. Had Maimonides recognised clearly the strength of the national sentiment as a force in Jewish life, and its importance as a factor in the development of Judaism, he would undoubtedly have used it, as Jehudah Halevi did, to explain the numerous features of Judaism which have their origin in the national sentiment. At any rate, he would not have endeavoured to invest those features with a universalistic character. For instance, in seeking reasons for the commandments he could easily have found that many of them have no purpose but to strengthen the feeling of national unity; and he would not have said of the Festivals that they “promote the good feeling that men should have to each other in their social and political relations.”154 Nor would he have said, in dealing with the future redemption, that “the wise men and the prophets only longed for the days of the Messiah in order that they might be free to study the Torah and its wisdom, without any oppression or interference, and so might win eternal life.”155 No doubt we do sometimes find in his Letters, and especially in those that were written to encourage his people in times of national trouble, feeling references to the fortunes and the mission of the Jewish people.156 But despite these isolated and casual references, only one conclusion can be drawn from the general tenor of Maimonides’ teaching: that he did not recognise the value of the national element in Jewish life, and did not allow that element due weight in his exposition of Judaism.157 On the other hand, various indications show that in Maimonides himself the national sentiment was, without his knowledge, a powerful force: so much so, that it sometimes actually drove him from the straight road of logic and reason, and entangled him—of all men—in contradictions which had no ground or justification in his theory. We shall always find in the psychology of even the most logical thinker, despite his efforts to give to reason the undivided empire of his thought, some remote corner to which its sway cannot extend; and we shall always find a rebel band of ideas, which reason cannot control, breaking out from that point of vantage to disturb the order of its realm. Of this truth Maimonides may serve as an example. It is particularly evident in regard to the dogmas of Judaism which he laid down, accompanied by a declaration that “if any man rejects one of these fundamental beliefs, he severs himself from the community and denies a principle of Judaism: he is called a heretic and an unbeliever, and it is right to hate him and to destroy him.”158 As we have already seen, it is an inevitable consequence of Maimonides’ teaching that the dogmas of religion must be formulated clearly and made obligatory on the whole people. But in strict accordance with his system Maimonides ought to have included among the dogmas only those “true opinions” without which religion could not have been maintained or have fulfilled its function. And in fact all his dogmas are of that character, except only the two last—those which assert the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection. How, then, did he come to include these two?

This question was raised soon after Maimonides’ own time (especially in regard to the belief in the Messiah); and his critics rightly pointed out that before laying down dogmas one must define exactly what is meant by a dogma, so that we may know how to distinguish between what may and what may not be properly so called.159 It is indeed strange that Maimonides forgot so elementary a rule of logic, and still more strange when we remember that elsewhere, in enumerating the six hundred and thirteen commandments of the Law, he was fully alive to the necessity of explaining first of all “the principles which it is proper to take as a criterion,” in order to select from the multitude of ordinances in the Torah those capital commandments from which the rest are derived. For this reason he fell foul of the earlier enumerations, which he regarded as ignorantly made and full of mistakes; and for his own part he first laid down fourteen “principles,” and then proceeded to enumerate the commandments according to those principles.160 But if this procedure was necessary in dealing with the practical commandments, surely it was even more necessary in the case of the dogmas of faith. How, then, did it happen that Maimonides embarked on so important a task as the enumeration of dogmas without first laying down some principle by which to guide himself?

It seems to me that we have to do here not with a casual mistake, but with one of those facts which indicate that the national sentiment was strong enough in Maimonides to conquer even logic. If Maimonides had set out to define the term “dogma” in its purely religious sense, he could not have found the slightest justification for regarding the national belief in a future redemption as a dogma. But he felt that a national hope was necessary to the existence of the nation; and without the existence of the nation the continuance of its religion is unthinkable. It was this feeling that made him for once oblivious of logic, and prevented him from clearing up in his own mind the nature of religious dogmas in general, so that he might be able to include among them that national belief on which the nation depends for its existence, although it has no direct relation to the maintenance of religion as such.161

So also with the belief in resurrection, by which our people has always set great store in its exile. Every individual Jew has suffered the pain of exile not merely in his own person, but as a member of his people; his indignation and grief have been excited not by his private trouble only, but by the national trouble. He could find personal consolation in the hope of eternity in paradise; but this did not blunt the edge of the national trouble, which demanded its consolation in the prospect of a bright future for the nation. In those days the individual Jew was no longer, as in ancient times, keenly conscious that successive generations were made one by the organic life of the nation; and he could not therefore find consolation in the happiness which awaited his people at the end of time, but which he himself would not share. Hence he clung to the belief in resurrection, which offered what he required—a reward to himself for his individual share of the national grief. Just as every Jew had participated, during his own lifetime, in the national sorrow, so would every Jew be privileged in the future to see with his own eyes the national consolation and redemption.162 Thus the belief in resurrection was complementary to the belief in the Messiah. United, they gave the people heart and strength to bear the yoke of exile and to battle successfully against a sea of troubles, confident that sooner or later the haven would be reached. When, therefore, Maimonides found it written in the Mishnah (beginning of chapter Chelek) that he who denies resurrection forfeits eternal life, he did not feel any need to explain this statement in a sense opposed to its literal meaning, as he usually did when his system so demanded, but took it just as he found it, and made it a dogma. He satisfied his heart at the expense of his head.

Strangely enough, Maimonides himself was perplexed over the question of resurrection, and could not explain why he clung to a belief which it was not easy to combine with his own theory of the soul and the future life. When he formulates the dogmas in his Commentary on the Mishnah, he passes hurriedly over this one, and dismisses it in a few words, as though he were afraid that if he lingered at this point logic would catch him up and ask awkward questions. In the Mishneh Torah, again, he does not explain this dogma at all, either at the beginning of the book, where he deals with the Foundations of the Law, or at the end, where he discusses the Messianic Age. This omission led some of his critics to suspect that he did not really believe in a literal resurrection of the body, but explained it in the sense of the rebirth of the soul hereafter (on which he enlarges very often). This suspicion made him very indignant, and he wrote a whole treatise to prove that he had never intended to take resurrection in any but its literal sense. On the contrary, he maintained that the belief must be accepted literally, and that it was in no way inconsistent with what he had written or with his general view.163 But the arguments in this treatise are all very weak, and the general impression which it leaves is that he did not clearly understand his own mind. He felt instinctively that he could not give up this belief, though it was foreign to his system; but it was only with great difficulty that he could explain why he allowed it such importance. It was, of course, impossible for a man like Maimonides to admit to himself that he was following feeling rather than reason. He tried therefore to justify his standpoint on rational grounds, but without success.164

We find the same struggle between philosophical system and national sentiment in Maimonides’ attitude to the Hebrew language. From the point of view of his system he naturally saw no difference between one language and another: what matters is the idea, not its external dress. Hence he lays it down that speech “is not to be forbidden or allowed, loved or despised, according to the language, but according to the subject. That which is lofty may be said in whatever language; that which is mean may not be said in any language.”165 Practising what he preached, he wrote most of his books not in Hebrew, but in Arabic, because he thought that by being written in the ordinary language of his age and his surroundings they would be of greater use from the point of view of their subject-matter. The only book that he wrote in Hebrew was the Mishneh Torah; and here also he was guided by practical considerations. He chose the language of the Mishnah because he wanted his people to regard the book with respect as a kind of second Mishnah. The beautiful Mishnaic language would carry off the “true opinions,” which needed the help of a sacred language to make them holy and bring them under the ægis of religion. Thus far Maimonides the philosopher. But in his letters we find clear indications that after he had finished his work his national sentiment proved stronger than his philosophy, and he regretted that he had not written his other works in Hebrew as well. Not only that, but he actually thought of translating them into the national language himself, so as “to separate that which is precious from that which is defiled, and to restore stolen goods to their rightful owner.” But the decline of his powers in old age did not permit him to carry out this intention, and the Hebrew translation had to wait for other hands. Some of it was done in his lifetime; and his letter to the translator of the Guide shows how pleased he was.166

But there is really no need to look for the influence of the national sentiment in particular parts of Maimonides’ work. His work as a whole cannot be fully understood unless we allow for this sentiment. Of course, as we have seen, Maimonides’ efforts to improve religion were the result of his philosophy, which taught him that religion must be made fit to fulfil its function in the spheres of theory and practice; and for his own part he certainly believed that he was actuated solely by this conviction, and was doing, as needs he must, what reason demanded of him. But we, who look at things in the light of modern psychology, which tells us that intellectual conviction is not sufficient to produce sustained effort unless it is accompanied by a strong emotion, whereby the will is roused to conquer all obstacles—we cannot conceive the possibility of arduous work without a compelling emotion. And when we look for the emotion which is most likely to furnish an explanation in this particular case, we shall find none except the national sentiment.

For we know, on the one hand, that religious laws were for Maimonides nothing but an instrument of education—a means of confirming people in true beliefs and good habits of life. Moreover, he regarded many of them (sacrifices and the ceremonial associated with sacrifices) as merely a necessary evil, designed to restrict a bad practice which had taken root in the national life at an early period, and could not be abolished entirely; and even this justification applied only to the laws as a whole, while their details, as we saw above, were in his opinion wholly without meaning or significance. And yet, holding such views, he worked day and night for ten years to collect all these laws and arrange them, with meticulous exactness, down to their smallest details. Whoever realises the enormous labour that it required to get together the mass of legal prescriptions, scattered over an extensive literature, must admit that no man can be qualified for the work (even if he recognises its usefulness from a certain point of view) unless the work itself has a strong attachment for him. To see the usefulness of the work is not enough; it must be a real labour of love. What then can have kept Maimonides to his task if not the national sentiment, which made him love his people’s Law and ancient customs even where his philosophy did not attach to them any particular importance?

And on the other side, Maimonides could not have laboured to turn Judaism into a pure philosophy without the help of the national sentiment. We can understand the religious philosopher who tries to effect a compromise between religion and philosophy. The impelling force is his religious feeling: anxious to save religion from the danger threatened by rationalism, he adopts the familiar expedient of dressing religion in the trappings of philosophy, so as to safeguard its essential meaning. But when a philosopher starts, as Maimonides did, with the conviction that there is no room for compromise, but that religion is compelled, willy-nilly, to teach only what reason approves and when he labours indefatigably to purify religious belief of all super-rational elements, and to turn its essential content into a pure philosophical system, and all this by long and devious methods, which reason cannot always approve: then we are bound to ask what emotion it was that gave him the strength and the will-power required for so difficult a task. Religious emotion certainly gained nothing from a process by which religion was driven from its own throne and deprived of its letters patent as a guide to eternal happiness along a private road of its own. Philosophical emotion—if the term may be used—might have gained more if Maimonides had accepted and prescribed the method adopted by free-thinkers before and after him—that of leaving faith to the believing masses and being satisfied for his own part with reason alone. But the national sentiment did gain a great deal by the transformation of the Jewish religion—the only national inheritance which had survived to unite our scattered people in exile—into philosophical truth, firmly based on rational and (as Maimonides sincerely believed) irrefragable proofs, and consequently secure for all time against assault.

So we come finally to the conclusion that Maimonides, too, like the other Jewish thinkers, had as the ultimate aim of his great work (though perhaps he did not realise it clearly) the shaping of the content and form of Judaism into a fortress on which the nation could depend for its continuance in exile. There is only this difference: that whereas his predecessors held Judaism secure because it was above reason, Maimonides came and said: “No! Judaism is secure because it is reason.”