A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy/Chapter 15
CHAPTER XV
LEVI BEN GERSON
Among the men who devoted themselves to philosophical investigation in the century and a half after Maimonides's death, the greatest and most independent was without doubt Levi ben Gerson or Gersonides, as he is also called. There were others who were active as commentators, translators and original writers, and who achieved a certain fame, but their work was too little original to merit more than very brief notice in these pages. Isaac Albalag331a (second half of thirteenth century) owes what reputation he enjoys to the boldness with which he enunciated certain doctrines, such as the eternity of the world and particularly the notion, well enough known among the Averroists of the University of Paris at that time and condemned by the Church, but never before announced or defended in Jewish philosophy—the so-called doctrine of the twofold truth. This was an attitude assumed in self-defence, sincerely or not as the case may be, by a number of scholastic writers, who advanced philosophic views at variance with the dogma of the Church. They maintained that a given thesis might be true and false at the same time, true for philosophy and false for theology, or vice versa.332 Shem Tob Falaquera (1225-1290) is a more important man than Albalag. He was a thorough student of the Aristotelian and other philosophy that was accessible to him through his knowledge of Arabic. Munk's success in identifying Avicebron with Gabirol (p. 63) was made possible by Falaquera's translation into Hebrew of extracts from the "Fons Vitæ." Of great importance also is Falaquera's commentary of Maimonides's "Guide," which, with that of Moses of Narbonne (d. after 1362), is based upon a knowledge of Arabic and a thorough familiarity with the Aristotelian philosophy of the Arabs, and is superior to the better known commentaries of Shemtob, Ephodi, and Abarbanel, Falaquera also wrote original works of an ethical and philosophical character.
Joseph Ibn Caspi (1297-1340) is likewise a meritorious figure as a commentator of Maimonides and as a philosophical exegete of Scripture. But none of these men stands out as an independent thinker with a strong individuality, carrying forward in any important and authoritative degree the work of the great Maimonides. Great Talmudic knowledge, which was a necessary qualification for national recognition, these men seem not to have had; and on the other hand none of them felt called upon or able to make a systematic synthesis of philosophy and Judaism in a large way.
Levi ben Gerson (1288-1344) was the first after Maimonides who can at all be compared with the great sage of Fostat. He was a great mathematician and astronomer; he wrote supercommentaries on the Aristotelian commentaries of Averroes, who in his day had become the source of philosophical knowledge for the Hebrew student; he was thoroughly versed in the Talmud as his commentary on the Pentateuch shows; and he is one of the recognized Biblical exegetes of the middle ages. Finally in his philosophical masterpiece "Milhamot Adonai" (The Wars of the Lord),333 he undertakes to solve in a thoroughly scholastic manner those problems in philosophy and theology which Maimonides had either not treated adequately or had not solved to Gersonides's satisfaction. That despite the technical character and style of the "Milhamot," Gersonides achieved such great reputation shows in what esteem his learning and critical power were held by his contemporaries. His works were all written in Hebrew, and if he had any knowledge of Arabic and Latin it was very limited, too limited to enable him to make use of the important works written in those languages.334 His fame extended beyond the limits of Jewish thought, as is shown by the fact that his scientific treatise dealing with the astronomical instrument he had discovered was translated into Latin in 1377 by order of Pope Clement VI, and his supercommentaries on the early books of the Aristotelian logic were incorporated, in Latin translation, in the Latin editions of Aristotle and Averroes of the 16th century.335
Levi ben Gerson's general attitude to philosophical study and its relation to the content of Scripture is the same as had become common property through Maimonides and his predecessors. The happiness and perfection of man are the purpose of religion and knowledge. This perfection of man, or which is the same thing, the perfection of the human soul, is brought about through perfection in morals and in theoretical speculation, as will appear more clearly when we discuss the nature of the human intellect and its immortality. Hence the purpose of the Bible is to lead man to perfect himself in these two elements—morals and science. For this reason the Law consists of three parts. The first is the legal portion of the Law containing the 613 commandments, mandatory and prohibitive, concerning belief and practice. This is preparatory to the second and third divisions of the Pentateuch, which deal respectively with social and ethical conduct, and the science of existence. As far as ethics is concerned it was not practicable to lay down definite commandments and prohibitions because it is so extremely difi&cult to reach perfection in this aspect of life. Thus if the Torah gave definite prescriptions for exercising and controlling our anger, our joy, our courage, and so on, the results would be very discouraging, for the majority of men would be constantly disobeying them. And this would lead to the neglect of the other commandments likewise. Hence the principles of social and ethical conduct are inculcated indirectly by means of narratives exemplifying certain types of character in action and the consequences flowing from their conduct. The third division, as was said before, contains certain teachings of a metaphysical character respecting the nature of existence. This is the most important of all, and hence forms the beginning of the Pentateuch. The account of creation is a study in the principles of philosophical physics.336
As to the relations of reason and belief or authority, Levi ben Gerson shares in the optimism of the Maimonidean school and the philosophic middle age generally, that there is no opposition between them. The priority should be given to reason where its demands are unequivocal, for the meaning of the Scriptures is not always clear and is subject to interpretation.337 On the other hand, after having devoted an entire book of his "Milhamot" to a minute investigation of the nature of the human intellect and the conditions of its immortality, he disarms in advance all possible criticism of his position from the religious point of view by saying that he is ready to abandon his doctrine if it is shown that it is in disagreement with religious dogma. He developed his views, he tells us, because he believes that they are in agreement with the words of the Torah.338 This apparent contradiction is to be explained by making a distinction between the abstract statement of the principle and the concrete application thereof. In general Levi ben Gerson is so convinced of man's prerogative as a rational being that he cannot believe the Bible meant to force upon him the behef in things which are opposed to reason. Hence, since the Bible is subject to interpretation, the demands of the reason are paramount where they do not admit of doubt. On the other hand, where the traditional dogma of Judaism is clear and outspoken, it is incumbent upon man to be modest and not to claim the infallibility of direct revelation for the limited powers of logical inference and deduction.
We must now give a brief account of the questions discussed in the "Milhamot Adonai." And first a word about Gersonides's style and method. One is reminded, in reading the Milhamot, of Aristotle as well as Thomas Aquinas. There is no rhetoric and there are no superfluous words. All is precise and technical, and the vocabulary is small. One is surprised to see how in a brief century or so the Hebrew language has become so flexible an instrument in the expression of Aristotelian ideas. Levi ben Gerson does not labor in the expression of his thought. His linguistic instrument is quite adequate and yields naturally to the manipulation of the author. Gersonides, the minute logician and analyst, has no use for rhetorical flourishes and figures of speech. The subject, he says, is difficult enough as it is, without being made more so by rhetorical obscuration, unless one intends to hide the confusion of one's thought under the mask of fine writing.339 Like Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, he gives a history of the opinions of others in the topic under discussion, and enumerates long lists of arguments pro and con with rigorous logical precision. The effect upon the reader is monotonous and wearisome. Aristotle escapes this by the fact that he is groping his way before us. He has not all his ideas formulated in proper order and form ready to deliver. He is primarily the investigator, not the pedagogue, and the brevity and obscurity of his style pique the ambitious reader and spur him on to puzzle out the meaning. Not so Thomas Aquinas and the scholastics generally. As the term scholastic indicates, they developed their method in the schools. They were expositors of what was ready made, rather than searchers for the new. Hence the question of form was an important one and was determined by the purpose of presenting one's ideas as clearly as may be to the student. Add to this that the logic of Aristotle and the syllogism was the universal method of presentation and the monotony and wearisomeness becomes evident. Levi ben Gerson is in this respect like Aquinas rather than like Aristotle. And he is the first of his kind in Jewish literature. Since the larger views and problems were already common property, the efforts of Gersonides were directed to a more minute discussion of the more technical details of such problems as the human intellect, prophecy. Providence, creation, and so on. For this reason, too, it will not be necessary for us to do more than give a brief resume of the results of Gersonides's lucubrations without entering into the really bewildering and hair-splitting arguments and distinctions which make the book so hard on the reader.
We have already had occasion in the Introduction (p. xxxvi) to refer briefly to Aristotle's theory of the intellect and the distinction between the passive and the active intellects in man. The ideas of the Arabs were also referred to in our treatment of Judah Halevi, Ibn Daud and Maimonides (pp. 180 f., 213 f., 282). Hillel ben Samuel, as we saw (p. 317 ff.), was the first among the Jews who undertook to discuss in greater detail the essence of the three kinds of intellect, material, acquired and active, as taught by the Mohammedan and Christian Scholastics, and devoted some space to the question of the unity of the material intellect. Levi ben Gerson takes up the same question of the nature of the material intellect and discusses the various views with more rigor and minuteness than any of his Jewish predecessors. His chief source was Averroes. The principal views concerning the nature of the possible or material intellect in man were those attributed to Alexander of Aphrodisias, the most important Greek commentator of Aristotle (lived about 200 of the Christian Era), Themistius, another Aristotelian Greek commentator who lived in the time of Emperor Julian, and Averroes, the famous Arabian philosopher and contemporary of Maimonides. All these three writers pretended to expound Aristotle's views of the passive intellect rather than propound their own. And Levi ben Gerson discusses their ideas before giving his own.
Alexander's idea of the passive intellect in man is that it is simply a capacity residing in the soul for receiving the universal forms of material things. It has no substantiality of its own, and hence does not survive the lower functions of the soul, namely, sensation and imagination, which die with the body. This passive intellect is actualized through the Active Intellect, which is not a part of man at all, but is identified by Alexander wdth God. The Active Intellect is thus pure form and actuality, and enables the material or possible intellect in man, originally a mere potentiahty, to acquire general ideas, and thus to become an intellect with a content. This is called the actual or acquired intellect, which though at first dependent on the data of sense, may succeed later in continuing its activity unaided by sense perception. And in so far as the acquired intellect thinks of the purely immaterial ideas and things which make up the content of the divine intellect (the Active Intellect), it becomes identified with the latter and is immortal. The reason for supposing that the material intellect in man is a mere capacity residing in the soul and not an independent substance is because as having the capacity to receive all kinds of forms it must itself not be of any form. Thus in order that the sense of sight may receive all colors as they are, it must itself be free from color. If the sight had a color of its own, this would prevent it from receiving other colors. Applying this principle to the intellect we make the same inference that it must in itself be neutral, not identified with any one idea or form, else this would color all else knocking for admission, and the mind would not know things as they are. Now a faculty which has no form of its own, but is a mere mirror so to speak of all that may be reflected in it, cannot be a substance, and must be simply a power inherent in a substance and subject to the same fate as that in which it inheres. This explains the motive of Alexander's view and is at the same time a criticism of the doctrine of Themistius.
This commentator is of the opinion that the passive intellect of which Aristotle speaks is not a mere capacity inherent in something else, but a real spiritual entity or substance independent of the lower parts of the soul, though associated with them during the life of the body, and hence is not subject to generation and destruction, but is eternal. In support of this view may be urged that if the passive intellect were merely a capacity of the lower parts of the soul, we should expect it to grow weaker as the person grows older and his sensitive and imaginative powers are beginning to decline; whereas the contrary is the case. The older the person the keener is his intellect. The difficulty, however, remains that if the human intellect is a real substance independent of the rest of the soul, why is it that at its first appearance in the human being it is extremely poor in content, being all but empty, and grows as the rest of the body and the soul is developed?
To obviate these difficulties, Averroes in his commentary on the De Anima of Aristotle practically identifies (according to Levi ben Gerson's view of Averroes) the material intellect with the Active Intellect. The Active Intellect according to him is neither identical with the divine, as Alexander maintains, nor is it a part of man, as Themistius and others think, but is the last of the separate Intelligences, next to the spiritual mover of the lunar sphere. It is a pure actuality, absolutely free from matter, and hence eternal. This Active Intellect in some mysterious manner becomes associated with man, and this association results in a temporary phase represented by the material intellect. As a result of the sense perceptions, images of the external objects remain in the imagination, and the Active Intellect takes hold of these images, which are potentially universal ideas, and by its illumination produces out of them actual ideas and an intellect in which they reside, the material intellect. The material intellect is therefore the result of the combination of the Active Intellect with the memory images, known as phantasmata (φαντάσματα), in the human faculty of imagination. So long as this association exists, the material intellect receives the intelligible forms as derived from the phantasmata, and these forms are represented by such ideas as "all animal is sensitive," "all man is rational," i. e., ideas concerning the objects of this world. This phase of man's mind ceases when the body dies, and the Active Intellect alone remains, whose content is free from material forms. The Active Intellect contemplates itself, a pure intelligence. At the same time it is possible for man to identify himself with the Active Intellect as he acquires knowledge in the material intellect, for the Active Intellect is like light which makes the eye see. In seeing, the eye not merely perceives the form of the external object, but indirectly also receives the light which made the object visible. In the same way the human soul in acquiring knowledge as implicit in its phantasmata, at the same time gets a glimpse of the spiritual light which converted the phantasma into an explicit idea (cf. above, p. 320). When the soul in man perfects itself with all the knowledge of this world it becomes identified with the Active Intellect, which may be likened to the intellect or soul of the corporeal world.
In this combination of the views of Alexander and Themistius Averroes succeeds in obviating the criticisms levelled at the two former. That the power of the material intellect grows keener with age though the corporeal organs are weaker, supports Averroes's doctrine as against Alexander, to whom it is a mere capacity dependent upon the mixture of the elements in the human body. But neither is he subject to the objection applying to Themistius's view, that a real independent entity could scarcely be void of all forms and a mere receptacle. For the material intellect as it really is in itself when not in combination with the human body is not a mere receptacle or empty potentiality. It is the Active Intellect, which combines in itself all immaterial forms and thinks them as it thinks itself. It is only in its individualized aspect that it becomes a potential intellect ready to receive all material forms.
But what Averroes gains here he loses elsewhere. There are certain considerations which are fatal to his doctrine. Thus it would follow that theoretical studies which have no practical aim are useless. But this is impossible. Nature has put in us the ability as well as the desire to speculate without reference to practical results. The pleasure we derive from theoretical studies is much greater than that afforded by the practical arts and trades. And nature does nothing in vain. Theoretical studies must therefore have some value. But in Averroes's theory of the material intellect they have none. For all values may be divided into those which promote the life of the body and those which lead to the final happiness of man. The former is clearly not served by those theoretical speculations which have no practical aim. On the contrary, they hinder it. Deep students of the theoretical sciences forego all bodily pleasures, and often do without necessities. But neither can there be any advantage in theoretical speculation for ultimate human happiness. For human happiness according to Averroes (and he is in a sense right, as we shall see later) consists in union with the Active Intellect. But this union takes place as a matter of course according to his theory at the time of death, whether a man be wise or a fool. For the Active Intellect then absorbs the material.
Another objection to Averroes's theory is the following. If the material intellect is in essence the same as the Active Intellect, it is a separate, immaterial substance, and hence is, like the Active Intellect, one. For only that which has matter as its substratum can be quantitatively differentiated. Thus A is numerically different from B, though A and B are both men (i. e., qualitatively the same), because they are corporeal beings. Forms as such can be differentiated qualitatively only. Horse is different from ass in quality. Horse as such and horse as such are the same. It follows from this that the material intellect, being like the Active Intellect an immaterial form, cannot be numerically multiplied, and therefore is one only. But if so, no end of absurdities follows. For it means that all men have the same intellect, hence the latter is wise and ignorant at the same time in reference to the same thing, in so far as A knows a given thing and B does not know it. It would also follow that A can make use of B's sense experience and build his knowledge upon it. All these inferences are absurd, and they all follow from the assumption that the material intellect is in essence the same as the Active Intellect. Hence Averroes's position is untenable.340
Gersonides then gives his own view of the material intellect, which is similar to that of Alexander. The material intellect is a capacity, and the prime matter is the ultimate subject in which it inheres. But there are other powers or forms inhering in matter prior to the material intellect. Prime matter as such is not endowed with intellect, or all things would have human reason. Prime matter when it reaches the stage of development of the imaginative faculty is then ready to receive the material intellect. We may say then that the sensitive soul, of which the imaginative faculty is a part, is the subject in which the material intellect inheres. The criticism directed against Alexander, which applies here also, may be answered as follows. The material intellect is dependent upon its subject, the sensitive soul, for its existence only, not for the manner of receiving its knowledge. Hence the weakening or strengthening of its subject cannot affect it directly at all. Indirectly there is a relation between the two, and it works in the reverse direction. When the sensitive powers are weakened and their activities diminish, there is more opportunity for the intellect to monopolize the one soul for itself and increase its own activity, which the other powers have a tendency to hinder, since the soul is one for all these contending powers. It follows of course that the material intellect in man is not immortal. As a capacity of the sensitive soul, it dies with the latter. What part of the human soul it is that enjoys immortality and on what conditions we shall see later. But before we do this, we must try to understand the nature of the Active Intellect.341
We know now that the function of the Active Intellect is to actualize the material intellect, i. e., to develop the capacity which the latter has of extracting general ideas from the particular memory images (phantasmata) in the faculty of imagination, so that this capacity, originally empty of any content, receives the ideas thus produced, and is thus constituted into an actual intellect. From this it follows that the Active Intellect, which enables the material intellect to form ideas, must itself have the ideas it induces in the latter, though not necessarily in the same form. Thus an artisan, who imposes the form of chair upon a piece of wood, must have the form of chair in his mind, though not the same sort as he realizes in the wood. Now as all the ideas acquired by the material intellect constitute one single activity so far as the end and purpose is concerned (for it all leads to the perfection of the person), the agent which is the cause of it all must also be one. Hence there are not many Active Intellects, each responsible for certain ideas, but one Intellect is the cause of all the ideas realized in the material intellect. Moreover, as this Active Intellect gives the material intellect not merely a knowledge of separate ideas, but also an understanding of their relations to each other, in other words of the systematic unity connecting all ideas into one whole, it follows that the Active Intellect has a knowledge of the ideas from their unitary aspect. In other words, the unity of purpose and aim which is evident in the development of nature from the prime matter through the forms of the elements, the plant soul, the animal soul and up to the human reason, where the lower is for the sake of the higher, must reside as a unitary conception in the Active Intellect.
For the Active Intellect has another function besides developing the rational capacity in man. We can arrive at this insight by a consideration undertaken from a different point of view. If we consider the wonderful and mysterious development of a seed, which is only a piece of matter, in a purposive manner, passing through various stages and producing a highly complicated organism with psychic powers, we must come to the conclusion, as Aristotle does, that there is an intellect operating in this development. As all sublunar nature shows a unity of purpose, this intellect must be one. And as it cannot be like one of its products, it must be eternal and not subject to generation and decay. But these are the attributes which, on grounds taken from the consideration of the intellectual activity in man, we ascribed to the Active Intellect. Hence it is the Active Intellect. And we have thus shown that it has two functions. One is to endow sublunar nature with the intelligence and purpose visible in its processes and evolutions; the other is to enable the rational power in man to rise from a tabula rasa to an actual intellect with a content. From both these activities it is evident that the Active Intellect has a knowledge of sublunar creation as a systematic unity.
This conception of the Active Intellect, Levi ben Gerson says, will also answer all the difficulties by which other philosophers are troubled concerning the possibility of knowledge and the nature of definition. The problems are briefly these. Knowledge concerns itself with the permanent and universal. There can be no real knowledge of the particular, for the particular is never the same, it is constantly changing and in the end disappears altogether. On the other hand, the universal has no real existence outside of the mind, for the objectively real is the particular thing. The only really existing man is A or B or C; man in general, man that is not a particular individual man, has no objective extra-mental existence. Here is a dilemma. The only thing we can really know is the thing that is not real, and the only real thing is that which we cannot know. The Platonists solve this difficulty by boldly declaring that the universal ideas or forms are the real existents and the models of the things of sense. This is absurd. Aristotle's solution in the Metaphysics is likewise unsatisfactory. Our conception, however, of the Active Intellect enables us to solve this problem satisfactorily. The object of knowledge is not the particular thing which is constantly changing; nor yet the logical abstraction which is only in the mind. It is the real unity of sublunar nature as it exists in the Active Intellect.
The problem of the definition is closely related to that of knowledge. The definition denotes the essence of every individual of a given species. As the individuals of a given species have all the same definition, and hence the same essence, they are all one. For what is not in the definition is not real. Our answer is that the definition represents that unitary aspect of the sublunar individuals which is in the Active Intellect. This aspect is also in a certain sense present in every one of the individual objects of nature, but not in the same manner as in the Active Intellect.342
We are now ready to take up the question of human immortality. The material intellect as a capacity for acquiring knowledge is not immortal. Being inherent in the sensitive soul and dependent for its acquisition of knowledge upon the memory images (phantasmata) which appear in the imagination, the power to acquire knowledge ceases with the cessation of sense and imagination. But the knowledge already acquired, which, we have shown above, is identical with the conceptions of sublunar nature in the Active Intellect, is indestructible. For these conceptions are absolutely immaterial; they are really the Active Intellect in a sense, and only the material is subject to destruction. The sum of acquisition of immaterial ideas constitutes the acquired or actual intellect, and this is the immortal part of man.
Further than this man cannot go. The idea adopted by some that the human intellect may become identified completely with the Active Intellect, Levi ben Gerson rejects. In order to accomplish this, he says, it would be necessary to have a complete and perfect knowledge of all nature, and that too a completely unified and wholly immaterial knowledge just as it is in the Active Intellect. This is clearly impossible. But it is true that a man's happiness after death is dependent upon the amount and perfection of his knowledge. For even in this life the pleasure we derive from intellectual contemplation is greater the more nearly we succeed in completely concentrating our mind on the subject of study. Now after death there will be no disturbing factors such as are supplied in this world by the sensitive and emotional powers. To be sure this lack will also prevent the acquisition of new knowledge, as was said before, but the amount acquired will be there in the soul's power all at once and all the time. The more knowledge one has succeeded in obtaining during life, the more nearly he will resemble the Active Intellect and the greater will be his happiness.343
The next topic Levi ben Gerson takes up is that of prognostication. There are three ways in which certain persons come to know the future, dreams, divination and prophecy. What we wish to do is to determine the kind of future events that may be thus known beforehand, the agency which produces in us this power, and the bearing this phenomenon has on the nature of events generally, and particularly as concerns the question of chance and free will.
That there is such knowledge of future events is a fact and not a theory. Experience testifies to the fact that there are certain people who are able to foretell the future, not as a matter of accident or through a chance coincidence, but as a regular thing. Diviners these are called, or fortune tellers. This power is even better authenticated in prophecy, which no one denies. We can also cite many instances of dreams, in which a person sees a future event with all its particulars, and the dream comes true. All these cases are too common to be credited to chance. Now what does this show as to the nature of the events thus foreseen? Clearly it indicates that they carmot be chance happenings, for what is by chance cannot be foreseen. The only con- clusion then to be drawn is that these events are determined by the order of nature. But there is another implication in man's ability to foretell the future, namely, that what is thus known to man is first known to a higher intellect which communicates it to us.
The first of these two consequences leads us into difficulties. For if we examine the data of prognostication, whether it be of dream, divination or prophecy, we find that they concern almost exclusively such particular human events as would be classed in the category of the contingent rather than in that of the necessary. Fortune tellers regularly tell people about the kind of children they will have, the sort of things they will do, and so on. In prophecy similarly Sarah was told she would have a son (Gen. 18, 10). We also have examples of prognostication respecting the outcome of a battle, announcement of coming rain, — events due to definite causes — as well as the prediction of events which are the result of free choice or pure accident, as when Samuel tells Elisha that he will meet three men on the way, who will give him two loaves of bread, which he will accept; or when the prophet in Samariah tells the prophet in Bethel that he will be killed by a lion. The question now is, if these contingent things can be known in advance, they are not contingent; and if these are not, none are. For the uniform events in nature are surely not contingent. If then those events usually classed as contingent and voluntary are not such, there is no such thing as chance and free will at all, which is impossible.
Our answer is that as a matter of fact those contingent happenings we call luck and ill luck do often come frequently to certain persons, whom we call lucky or unlucky, which shows that they are not the result of pure chance, and that there is some sort of order determining them. Moreover, we know that the higher in the scale of being a thing is, the more nature takes care to guard it. Hence as man is the highest being here below, it stands to reason that the heavenly bodies order his existence and his fortune. And so the science of astrology, with all its mistakes on account of the imperfect state of our knowl- edge, does say a great many things which are true. This, however, does not destroy freedom and chance. For the horoscope represents only one side of the question. Man was also endowed with reason and purpose, which enable him whenever he chooses to counteract the order of the heavenly bodies. In the main the heavenly bodies by their positions and motions and the consequent predominance of cer- tain elemental qualities in the sublunar world over others affect the temperaments of man in a manner tending to his welfare. The social order with its differentiation of labor and occupation is worked out wonderfully well — better than the system of Plato's Republic — by the positions and motions of the heavenly bodies. If not for this, all men would choose the more honorable trades and professions, there would be no one to do the menial work, and society would be impossible. At the same time there are certain incidental evils inherent in the rigid system which would tend to destroy certain individuals. To counteract these unintended defects, God endowed man with reason and choice enabling him to avoid the dangers threatening him in the world of nature.
The solution of our problem then is this. These human events have a twofold aspect. They are determined so far as they follow from the order of the heavenly bodies; and in so far they can be foretold. They are undetermined so far as they are the result of individual choice, and in so far they cannot be known beforehand. There are also pure chance events in inanimate nature, bearing no relation to human fortune. These cannot be foretold.344
We said above that there must be an intellect which knows these contingent events predicted in dreams, divination and prophecy and imparts a knowledge of them to these men. This can be no other than the Active Intellect, whose nature we discussed above. For the Active Intellect knows the order of sublunar things, and gives us a knowledge of them in the ideas of the material intellect. Moreover, he is the agent producing them through the instrumentality of the heavenly bodies. Hence the heavenly bodies are also his instrument in ordering those contingent events which are predicted in dreams and prophetic visions.
The purpose of this information is to protect man against the evil destined for him in the order of the heavenly bodies, or in order that he may avail himself of the good in store for him if he knows of it. There is a difference in kind between prophecy on the one hand and divination and dream on the other. Prophecy comes from the Active Intellect directly acting on the material intellect. Hence only intelligent men can be prophets. Divination and dream come from the Active Intellect indirectly. They are caused by the heavenly bodies, and the action is on the imagination. The imagination is more easily isolated from the other parts of the soul in young people and simpletons. Hence we find examples of dreams and divination among them. 345
In discussing the problem of God's knowledge, Gersonides takes direct issue with Maimonides. The reader will recall that the question turns upon the knowledge of particulars. Some philosophers go so far as to deny to God any knowledge of things other than his own essence; for the known is in a sense identified with the knower, and to bring in a multiplicity of ideas in God's knowledge would endanger his unity. Others, however, fell short of this extreme opinion and admitted God's knowledge of things other than himself, but maintained that God cannot know particulars for various reasons. The particular is perceived by sense, a material faculty, whereas God is immaterial. Particulars are infinite and cannot be measured or embraced, whereas knowledge is a kind of measuring or embracing. The particulars are not always existing, and are subject to change. Hence God's knowledge would be subject to change and disappearance, which is impossible. If God knows particulars how is it that there is often a violation of right and justice in the destinies of individual men? This would argue in God either inability or indifference, both of which are impossible.
Maimonides insists on God's knowledge of all things of which he is the creator, including particulars. And he answers the arguments of the philosophers by saying that their objections are valid only if we assume that God's knowledge is similar to ours, and since with us it is impossible to know the material except through a material organ, it is not possible in God. As we cannot comprehend the infinite; as we cannot know the non-existent, nor the changing without a change in our knowledge, God cannot do so. But it is wrong to assume this. God's knowledge is identical with his essence, which these same philosophers insist is unlike anything else, and unknowable. Surely it follows that his knowledge is also without the least resemblance to our knowledge and the name alone is what they have in common. Hence all the objections of the philosophers fall away at one stroke. We cannot in one act of knowing embrace a number of things differing in species; God can, because his knowledge is one. We cannot know the non-existent, for our knowledge depends upon the thing known. God can. We cannot know the infinite, for the infinite cannot be embraced; God can. We cannot know the outcome of a future event unless the event is necessary and determined. If the event is contingent and undetermined we can only have opinion concerning it, which may or may not be true; we are uncertain and may be mistaken. God can know the outcome of a contingent event, and yet the event is not determined, and may happen one way or the other. Our knowledge of a given thing changes as the thing itself undergoes a change, for if our knowledge should remain the same while the object changes, it would not be knowledge but error. In God the two are compatible. He knows in advance how a given thing will change, and his knowledge never changes, even though that which was at one moment potential and implicit becomes later actual and explicit.
At this point Gersonides steps in in defence of human logic and sanity. He accuses Maimonides of not being quite honest with himself. Maimonides, he intimates, did not choose this position of his own free will—a position scientifically quite untenable — he was forced to it by theological exigencies. 346 He felt that he must vindicate, by fair means or foul, God's knowledge of particulars. And so Gersonides proceeds to demolish Maimonides's position by reducing it ad absurdum.
What does Maimonides mean by saying that God knows the contingent? If he means that God knows that the contingent may as contingent happen otherwise than as he knows it will happen, we do not call this in us knowledge, but opinion. If he means that God knows it will happen in a certain way, and yet it may turn out that the reverse will actually take place, then we call this in our case error, not knowledge. And if he means that God merely knows that it may happen one way or the other without knowing definitely which will happen, then we call this in our experience uncertainty and perplexity, not knowledge. By insisting that all this is in God knowledge because, forsooth, God's knowledge is not like our knowledge, is tantamount to saying that what is in us opinion, uncertainty, error, is in God knowledge — a solution far from complimentary to God's knowledge.
Besides, the entire principle of Maimonides that there is no relation of resemblance between God's attributes and ours, that the terms wise, just, and so on, are pure homonyms, is fundamentally wrong. We attribute knowledge to God because we know in our own case that an intellect is perfected by knowledge. And since we have come to the conclusion on other grounds that God is a perfect intellect, we say he must have knowledge. Now if this knowledge that we ascribe to God has no resemblance whatsoever to what we understand by knowledge in our own case, the ground is removed from our feet. We might as well argue that man is rational because solid is continuous. If the word knowledge means a totally different thing in God from what it means in us, how do we know that it is to be found in God? If we have absolutely no idea what the term means when applied to God, what reason have we for preferring knowledge as a divine attribute to its opposite or negative? If knowledge does not mean knowledge, ignorance does not mean ignorance, and it is just the same whether we ascribe to God the one or the other.
The truth is that the attributes we ascribe to God do have a resemblance to the same attributes in ourselves; only they are primary in God, secondary in ourselves, i. e., they exist in God in a more perfect manner than in us. Hence it is absurd to say that what would be in us error or uncertainty is in God knowledge. Our problem must be solved more candidly and differently. There are arguments in favor of God's knowing particulars (Maimonides gives some), and there are the arguments of the philosophers against the thesis. The truth must be between the two, that God knows them from one aspect and does not know them from another. Having shown above that human events are in part ordered and determined by the heavenly bodies, and in part undetermined and dependent upon the individual's choice, we can now make use of this distinction for the solution of our problem. God knows particulars in so far as they are ordered, he does not know them in so far as they are contingent. He knows that they are contingent, and hence it follows that he does not know which of the two possibilities will happen, else they would not be contingent. This is no defect in God's nature, for to know a thing as it is is no imperfection. In general God does not know particulars as particulars but as ordered by the universal laws of nature. He knows the universal order, and he knows the particulars in so far as they are united in the universal order.
This theory meets all objections, and moreover it is in agreement with the views of the Bible. It is the only one by which we can harmonize the apparent contradictions in the Scriptures. Thus on the one hand we are told that God sends Prophets and commands people to do and forbear. This implies that a person has freedom to choose, and that the contingent is a real category. On the other hand, we find that God foretells the coming of future events respecting human destiny, which signifies determination. And yet again we find that God repents, and that he does not repent. All these apparent contradictions can be harmonized on our theory. God foretells the coming of events in so far as they are determined in the universal order of nature. But man's freedom may succeed in counteracting this order, and the events predicted may not come. This is signified by the expression that God repents. 347
Levi ben Gerson's solution, whatever we may think of its scientific or philosophic value, is surely very bold as theology, we might almost say it is a theological monstrosity. It practically removes from God the definite knowledge of the outcome of a given event so far as that outcome is contingent. Gersonides will not give up the contingent, for that would destroy freedom. He therefore accepts free will with its consequences, at the risk of limiting God's knowledge to events which are determined by the laws of nature. Maimonides was less consistent, but had the truer theological sense, namely, he kept to both horns of the dilemma. God is omniscient and man is free. He gave up the solution by seeking refuge in the mysteriousness of God's knowledge. This is the true religious attitude.
The question of Providence is closely related to that of God's knowledge. For it is clear that one cannot provide for those things of which he does not know. Gersonides's view in this problem is very similar to that of Maimonides, and like him he sees in the discussions between Job and his friends the representative opinions held by philosophers in this important problem.
There are three views, he says, concerning the nature of Providence. One is that God's providence extends only to species and not to individuals. The second opinion is that God provides for every individual of the human race. The third view is that some individuals are specially provided for, but not all. Job held the first view, which is that of Aristotle. The arguments in favor of this opinion are that God does not know particulars, hence cannot provide for them. Besides, there would be more justice in the distribution of goods and evils in the world if God concerned himself about every individual. Then again man is too insignificant for God's special care.
The second view is that of the majority of our people. They argue that as God is the author of all, he surely provides for them. And as a matter of fact experience shows it; else there would be much more violence and bloodshed than there is. The wicked are actually punished and the good rewarded. This class is divided into two parts. Some think that while God provides for all men, not all that happens to a man is due to God; there are also other causes. The others think that every happening is due to God. This second class may again be divided according to the manner in which they account for those facts in experience which seem to militate against their view. Maintaining that every incident is due to God, they have to explain the apparent deviation from justice in the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the righteous. One party explains the phenome- non by saying that the prosperity and the adversity in these cases are only seeming and not real; that they in fact are the opposite of what they seem, or at least lead to the opposite. The second party answers the objection on the ground that those we think good may not really be such, and similarly those we think bad may not really be bad. For the way to judge a person's character is not merely by his deeds alone, but by his deeds as related to his temperament and disposition, which God alone knows. Eliphaz the Temanite belonged to those who think that not all which happens is due to God; that folly is responsible for a man's misfortune. Bildad the Shuchite beheved that all things are from God, but not all that seems good and evil is really so. Zophar the Naamathite thought we do not always judge character correctly; that temperament and disposition must be taken into account.
Of these various opinions the first one, that of Aristotle, cannot be true. Dreams, divination, and especially prophecy contradict it flatly. All these are given to the individual for his protection (cf. above, p. 342). The second opinion, namely, that God's providence extends to every individual, is likewise disproved by reason, by ex- perience and by the Bible. We have already proved (p. 345) that God's knowledge does not extend to particulars as such. He only knows things as ordered by the heavenly bodies; and knows at the same time that they may fail to happen because of man's free will. Now if God punishes and rewards every man according to his deeds, one of two things necessarily follows. Either he rewards and punishes according to those deeds which the individual is determined to do by the order of the heavenly bodies, or according to the deeds the in- dividual actually does. In the first case there would be often injus- tice, for the person might not have acted as the order of the heavenly bodies indicated he would act, for he is free to act as he will. The second case is impossible, for it would mean that God knows particulars as particulars — a thesis we have already disproved. Besides, evil does not come from God directly, since he is pure form and evil comes only from matter. Hence it cannot be said that he punishes the evil doer for his sin.
Experience also testifies against this view, for we see the just suffer and the wicked prosper. The manner in which Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar wish to defend God's justice will not hold water. Man's own folly will account perhaps for some evils befalling the righteous and some good coming to the wicked. But it will not account for the failure of the good man to get the reward he deserves, and of the wicked to receive the punishment which is his due. The righteous man often has troubles all his life no matter how careful he is to avoid them, and correspondingly the same is true of the wicked, that he is prosperous, despite his lack of caution and good sense. To avoid these objections as Eliphaz does by saying that if the wicked man himself is not punished, his children will be, is to go from the frying pan into the fire. For it is not just either to omit to punish the one deserving it, or to punish another innocent man for him. Nor is Zophar's defence any better. For the same man, with the same temperament and disposition, often suffers more when he is inclined to do good, and is prosperous when he is not so scrupulous. Bildad is no more successful than the other two. The evils coming to the righteous are often real and permanent. But neither does the Bible compel us to believe that God looks out for all individuals. This is especially true in reference to punishment, as can be gathered from such expressions as "I will hide my face from them, and they shall be given to be devoured" (Deut. 31, 17), or "As thou hast forgotten the law of thy God, so will I myself also forget thy children" (Hosea 4, 6). These expressions indicate that God does not punish the individuals directly, but that he leaves them to the fate that is destined for them by the order of the heavenly bodies. True there are other passages in Scripture speaking of direct punishment, but they may be interpreted so as not to conflict with our conclusions.
Having seen that neither of the two extreme views is correct, it remains to adopt the middle course, namely, that some individuals are provided for specially, and others not. The nearer a person is to the Active Intellect, the more he receives divine providence and care. Those people who do not improve their capabilities, which they possess as members of the species, are provided for only as members of the species. The matter may be put in another way also. God knows all ideas. Man is potentially capable of receiving them in a certain manner. God, who is actual, leads man from his potentiality to actuality. When a man's potentialities are thus realized, he becomes similar to God, because when ideas are actualized the agent and the thing acted upon are one. Hence the person enjoys divine providence at that time. The way in which God provides for such men is by giving them knowledge through dream, divination or prophecy or intuition or in some other unconscious manner on the individual's part, which knowledge protects him from harm. This view is not in con- flict with the truth that God does not know particulars as such. For it is not to the individual person as such that providence extends as a conscious act of God. The individualization is due to the recipient and not to the dispenser. One may object that after all since it is possible that bad men may have goods as ordered by the heavenly bodies, and good men may have misfortune as thus ordered, when their attachment to God is loosened somewhat, there is injustice in God if he could have arranged the heavenly spheres differently and did not, or incapacity if he could not. The answer is briefly that the order of the spheres does a great deal of good in maintaining the existence of things. And if some Httle evil comes also incidentally, this does not condemn the whole arrangement. In fact the evils come from the very agencies which are the authors of good. The view of providence here adopted is that of Elihu the son of Barachel the Buzite in the book of Job (ch. 32), and it agrees also with the opinion of Maimonides in the "Guide of the Perplexed" (c/. above, p. 292).348
Instead of placing his cosmology at the beginning of his system and proceeding from that as a basis to the other parts of his work, the psychology and the ethics, Levi ben Gerson, whose "Milhamot Hash em" is not so much a systematic work as an aggregation of discussions, reversed the process. He begins as we have seen with a purely psychological analysis concerning the nature of the human reason and its relation to the Active Intellect. He follows up this discussion with a treatment of prognostication as exhibiting some of the effects of the Active Intellect upon the reason and imagination of man. This is again followed by a discussion of God's knowledge and providence. And not until all these psychological (and in part ethical) questions have been decided, does Levi ben Gerson undertake to give us his views of the constitution of the universe and the nature and attributes of God. In this discussion he takes occasion to express his dissatisfaction with Aristotle's proofs of the existence of the spheral movers and of the unmoved mover or God, as inadequate to bear the structure which it is intended to erect upon them. It will be remembered that the innovation of Abraham Ibn Daud and Maimonides in making Jewish philosophy more strictly Aristotelian than it had been consisted in a great measure in just this introduction of the Aristotelian proof of the existence of God as derived from the motions of the heavenly bodies. Levi ben Gerson's proofs are teleological rather than mechanical. Aristotle said a moving body must have a mover outside of it, which if it is again a body is itself in motion and must have a mover in turn. And as this process cannot go on ad infinitum, there must be at the end of the series an unmoved mover. As unmoved this mover cannot be body; and as producing motion eternally, it cannot be a power residing in a body, a physical or material power, for no such power can be infinite. Gersonides is not satisfied with this proof. He argues that so far as the motions of the heavenly bodies are concerned there is no reason why a physical power cannot keep on moving them eternally. The reason that motions caused by finite forces in our world come to a stop is because the thing moved is subject to change, which alters its relation to its mover; and secondly because the force endeavors to move the object in opposition to its own tendency, in opposition to gravity. In the case of the heavenly bodies neither of these conditions is present. The relation of the mover to the moved is always the same, since the heavenly bodies are not subject to change; and as they are not made of the four terrestrial elements they have no inherent tendency to move in any direction, hence they offer no opposition to the force exerted upon them by the mover. A finite power might therefore quite conceivably cause eternal motion. Similarly an unmoved mover cannot be body, to be sure, but it may be a physical power like a soul, which in moving the body is not itself moved by that motion. Aristotle's proofs therefore are not sufficient to produce the conviction that the movers of the spheres and God himself are separate Intelligences. 349
Gersonides accordingly follows a different method. He argues that if a system of things and events exhibits perfection not here and there and at rare intervals but regularly, the inference is justified that there is an intelligent agent who had a definite purpose and design in establishing the system. The world below is such a system. Hence it has an intelligent agent as its author. This agent may be a separate and immaterial intelligence, or a corporeal power like a soul. He then shows that it cannot be a corporeal power, for it would have to reside in the animal sperm which exhibits such wonderful and purposive development, or in the parent animal from which the sperm came, both of which, he argues, are impossible. It remains then that the cause of the teleological life of the sublunar world is an immaterial power, a separate intellect. This intellect, he argues further, acts upon matter and endows it with forms, the only mediating power being the natural heat which is found in the seed and sperm of plants and animals. Moreover, it is aware of the order of what it produces. It is the Active Intellect of which we spoke above (p. 337). The forms of terrestrial things come from it directly, the heat residing in the seed comes from the motions of the spheres. This shows that the permanent motions of the heavenly bodies are also intelligent motions, for they tend to produce perfection in the terrestrial world and never come to a standstill, which would be the case if the motions were "natural" like those of the elements, or induced against their nature like that of a stone moving upward. We are justified in saying then that the heavenly bodies are endowed with intellects and have no material soul. Hence their movers are pure Intelligences, and there are as many of them as there are spheres, i. e., forty-eight, or fifty-eight or sixty-four according to one's opinion on the astronomical question of the number of spheres.
Now as the Active Intellect knows the order of sublunar existence in its unity, and the movers of the respective spheres know the order of their effects through the motions of the heavenly bodies, it follows that as all things in heaven above and on the earth beneath are related in a unitary system, there is a highest agent who is the cause of all existence absolutely and has a knowledge of all existence as a unitary system.350
The divine attributes are derived by us from his actions, and hence they are not pure homonyms (cf. p. 240). God has a knowledge of the complete order of sublunar things, of which the several movers have only a part. He knows it as one, and knows it eternally without change. His joy and gladness are beyond conception, for our joy also is very great in understanding. His is also the perfect Life, for understanding is life. He is the most real Substance and Existent, and he is One. God is also the most real Agent, as making the other movers do their work, and producing a complete and perfect whole out of their parts. He is also properly called Bestower, Beneficent, Gracious, Strong, Mighty, Upright, Just, Eternal, Permanent. All these attributes, however, do not denote multiplicity.351
From God we now pass again to his creation, and take up the problem which caused Maimonides so much trouble, namely, the question of the origin of the world. It will be remembered that dissatisfied with the proofs for the existence of God advanced by the Mutakallimun, Maimonides, in order to have a firm foundation for the central idea of religion, tentatively adopted the Aristotelian notion of the eternity of motion and the world. But no sooner does Maimonides establish his proof of the existence, unity and incorporeality of God than he returns to the attack of the Aristotelian view and points out that the problem is insoluble in a strictly scientific manner; that Aristotle himself never intended his arguments in favor of eternity to be regarded as philosophically demonstrated, and that they all labor under the fatal fallacy that because certain laws hold of the world's phenomena once it is in existence, these same laws must have governed the establishment of the world itself in its origin. Besides, the assumption of the world's eternity with its corollary of the necessity and immutability of its phenomena saps the foundation of all religion, makes miracles impossible, and reduces the world to a machine. Gersonides is on the whole agreed with Maimonides. He admits that Aristotle's arguments are the best yet advanced in the problem, but that they are not convincing. He also agrees with Maimonides in his general stricture on Aristotle's method, only modifying and restricting its generality and sweeping nature. With all this, however, he finds it necessary to take up the entire question anew and treats it in his characteristic manner, with detail and rigor, and finally comes to a conclusion different from that of Maimonides, namely, that the world had an origin in time, to be sure, but that it came not ex nihilo in the absolute sense of the word nihil, but developed from an eternal formless matter, which God endowed with form. This is the so-called Platonic view.
We cannot enter into all his details which are technical and fatiguing in the extreme, but we must give a general idea of his procedure in the investigation of this important topic.
The problem of the origin of the world, he says, is very difficult. First, because in order to learn from the nature of existing things whether they were created out of a state of non-existence or not, we must know the essence of existing things, which is not easy. Secondly, we must know the nature of God in order to determine whether he could have existed first without the world and then have created it, or whether he had to have the world with him from eternity. The fact of the great difference of opinion on this question among thinkers, and the testimony of Maimonides that Aristotle himself had no valid proof in this matter are additional indications of the great difficulty of the subject.
Some think the world was made and destroyed an infinite number of times. Others say it was made once. Of these some maintain it was made out of something (Plato); others, that it was made out of absolute nothing (Philoponus, the Mutakallimun, Maimonides and many of our Jewish writers). Some on the other hand, namely, Aristotle and his followers, hold the world to be eternal. They all have their defenders, and there is no need to refute the others since Aristotle has already done this. His arguments are the best so far, and deserve investigation. The fundamental fallacy in all his proofs is that he argues from the laws of genesis and decay in the parts of the world to the laws of these processes in the world as a whole. This might seem to be the same criticism which Maimonides advances, but it is not really quite the same, Maimonides's assertion being more general and sweeping. Maimonides says that the origin of the world as a whole need not be in any respect like the processes going on within its parts; whereas Gersonides bases his argmnent on the observed difference in the world between wholes and parts, admitting that the two may be alike in many respects.
In order to determine whether the world is created or not, it is best to investigate first those things in the world which have the appearance of being eternal, such as the heavenly bodies, time, motion, the form of the earth, and so on. If these are proven to be eternal, the world is eternal; if not, it is not. A general principle to help us distinguish a thing having an origin from one that has not is the following: A thing which came into being in time has a purpose. An eternal thing has no purpose. Applying this principle to the heavens we find that all about them is with a purpose to ordering the sublunar world in the best way possible. Their motions, their distances, their positions, their numbers, and so on are all for this purpose. Hence they had a beginning. Aristotle's attempts to explain these conditions from the nature of the heavens themselves are not successful, and he knew it. Again, as the heavenly bodies are all made of the same fifth element (the Aristotelian ether), the many varieties in their forms and motions require special explanation. The only satisfactory explanation is that the origin of the heavenly bodies is not due to nature and necessity, which would favor eternity, but to will and freedom, and the many varieties are for a definite purpose. Hence they are not eternal. ^^^
Gersonides then analyzes time and motion and proves that Aristotle to the contrary notwithstanding, they are both finite and not infinite. Time belongs to the category of quantity, and there is no infinite quantity. As time is dependent on motion, motion too is finite, hence neither is eternal. Another argument for creation in time is that if the world is eternal and governed altogether by necessity, the earth should be surrounded on all sides by water according to the nature of the lighter element to be above the heavier. Hence the appearance of parts of the earth's surface above the water is an indication of a break of natural law for a special purpose, namely, in order to produce the various mineral, plant and animal species. Hence once more purpose argues design and origin in time.
Finally if the world were eternal, the state of the sciences would be more advanced than it is. A similar argument may be drawn from language. Language is conventional; which means that the people existed before the language they agreed to speak. But man being a social animal they could not have existed an infinite time without language. Hence mankind is not eternal. ^^^
We have just proved that the world came into being, but it does not necessarily follow that it will be destroyed. Nay, there are reasons to show that it will not be destroyed. For there is no destruction except through matter and the predominance of the passive powers over the active. Hence the being that is subject to destruction must consist of opposites. But the heavenly bodies have no opposites, not being composite; hence they cannot be destroyed. And if so, neither can the sublunar order be destroyed, which is the work of the heavenly bodies. There is of course the abstract possibility of their being destroyed by their maker, not naturally, but by his will, as they were made; but we can find no reason in God for wishing to destroy them, all reasons existing in man for destroying things being inapplicable to God.^^^
That the world began in time is now established. The question still remains, was the world made out of something or out of nothing? Both are impossible. The first is impossible, for that something out of which the world was made must have had some form, for matter never is without form, and if so, it must have had some motion, and we have a kind of world already, albeit an imperfect one. The second supposition is also impossible; for while form may come out of nothing, body cannot come from not-body. We never see the matter of any object arise out of nothing, though the form may. Nature as well as art produces one corporeal thing out of another. Hence the generally accepted principle, "ex nihilo nihil fit." Besides it would follow on this supposition that before the world came into existence there was a vacuum in its place, whereas it is proved in the Physics that a vacuum is impossible. The only thing remaining therefore is to say that the world was made partly out of something, partly out of nothing, i. e., out of an absolutely formless matter.
It may be objected that to assume the existence of a second eternal thing beside God is equivalent to a belief in dualism, in two gods. But this objection may be easily answered. Eternity as such does not constitute divinity. If all the world were eternal, God would still be God because he controls everything and is the author of the order obtaining in the world. In general it is the qualitative essence that makes the divine character of God, his wisdom and power as the source of goodness and right order in nature. The eternal matter of which we are speaking is the opposite of all this. As God is the extreme of perfection so is matter the extreme of imperfection and defect. As God is the source of good, so is matter the source of evil. How then can anyone suppose for a moment that an eternal formless matter can in any way be identified with a divine being?
Another objection that may be offered to our theory is that it is an established fact that matter cannot exist at all without any form, whereas our view assumes that an absolutely formless matter existed an infinite length of time before the world was made from it. This may be answered by saying that the impossibiUty of matter existing without form applies only to the actual objects of nature. God put in sublunar matter the nature and capacity of receiving all forms in a certain order. The primary qualities, the hot and the cold and the wet and the dry, as the forms of the elements, enable this matter to receive other higher forms. The very capacity of receiving a given form argues a certain form on the part of the matter having this capacity; for if it had no form there would be no reason why it should receive one form rather than another; whereas we find that the reception of forms is not at random, but that a given form comes from a definite other form. Man comes only from man. But this does not apply to the prime matter of which we are speaking. It may have been without form. Nay, it is reasonable to suppose that as we find matter and form combined, and we also find pure forms without matter, viz., in the separate Intelligences, — it is reasonable to suppose that there is also matter without form.
Finally one may ask if the world has not existed from eternity, what determined the author to will its existence at the time he did and not at another? We cannot say that he acquired new knowledge which he had not before, or that he needed the world then and not before, or that there was some obstacle which was removed. The answer to this would be that the sole cause of the creation was the will of God to benefit his creatures. Their existence is therefore due to the divine causality, which never changes. Their origin in time is due to the nature of a material object as such. A material object as being caused by an external agent is incompatible with eternity. It must have a beginning, and there is no sense in asking why at this time and not before or after, for the same question would apply to any other time. Gersonides cites other objections which he answers, and then he takes up one by one the Aristotelian arguments in favor of eternity and refutes them in detail. We cannot afford to reproduce them here as the discussions are technical, lengthy and intricate. ^^^ Having given his philosophical cosmology, Gersonides then under- takes to show in detail that the Biblical story of creation teaches the same doctrine. Nay, he goes so far as to say that it was the Biblical account that suggested to him his philosophical theory. It would be truer to say that having approached the Bible with Aristotelian spectacles, and having no suspicion that the two attitudes are as far apart as the poles, he did not scruple to twist the expressions in Gen- esis out of all semblance to their natural meaning. The Biblical text had been twisted and turned ever since the days of Philo, and of the Mishna and Talmud and Midrash, in the interest of various schools and sects. Motives speculative, religious, theological, legal and ethical were at the basis of Biblical interpretation throughout its long history of two millennia and more — the end is not yet — and Gersonides was swimming with the current. The Bible is not a law, he says, which forces us to beheve absurdities and to practice useless things, as some people think. On the contrary it is a law which leads us to our per- fection. Hence what is proved by reason must be found in the Law, by interpretation if necessary. This is why Maimonides took pains to interpret all BibHcal passages in which God is spoken of as if he were corporeal. Hence also his statement that if the eternity of the world were strictly demonstrated, it would not be difficult to inter- pret the Bible so as to agree. But in the matter of the origin of the world, Gersonides continues, it was not necessary for me to force the Biblical account. Quite the contrary, the expressions in the Bible guided me to my view.^^^ Accordingly he finds support for his doctrine that the world was not created ex nihilo, in the fact that there is not one miracle in the Bible in which anything comes out of nothing. They are all instances of something out of a pre-existent something. The miracle of the oil in the case of Ehsha is no exception. The air changed into oil as it entered the partly depleted vessel. The six days of creation must not be taken literally. God's creation is timeless, and the six days in- dicate the natural order and rank in existing things proceeding from the cause to the effect and from the lower to the higher. Thus the movers of the heavenly bodies come before the spheres which they move as their causes. The spheres come before the terrestrial elements for the same reason. The elements are followed by the things com- posed of them. And among these too there is a certain order. Plants come before animals, aquatic animals before aerial, aerial before terrestrial, and the last of all is man, as the most perfect of sublunar creatures. All this he reads into the account of creation in Genesis. Thus the light spoken of in the first day represents the angels or sep- arate Intelligences or movers of the spheres, and they are distinguished from the darkness there, which stands for the heavenly bodies as the matters of their movers, though at the same time they are grouped together as one day, because the form and its matter constitute a unit. The water, which was divided by the firmament, denotes the prime formless matter, part of which was changed into the matter of the heavenly bodies, and part into the four terrestrial elements. Form and matter are also designated by the terms "Tohu" and Bohu" in the second verse in Genesis, rendered in the Revised Version by "with- out form" and "void." And so Gersonides continues throughout the story of creation, into the details of which we need not follow him.^^'^
The concluding discussion in the Milhamot is devoted to the prob- lem of miracles and its relation to prophecy. Maimonides had said that one reason for opposing the Aristotelian theory of the eternity of the world is that miracles would be an impossibility on that assump- tion. Hence Maimonides insists on creation ex nihilo, though he ad- mits that the Platonic view of a pre-existent matter may be reconciled with the Torah. Gersonides, who adopted the doctrine of an eternal matter, finds it necessary to say by way of introduction to his treat- ment of miracles that they do not prove creation ex nihilo. For as was said before all miracles exhibit a production of something out of some- thing and not out of nothing.
To explain the nature of miracles, he says, and their authors, it is necessary to know what miracles are. For this we must take the Biblical records as our data, just as we take the data of our senses in determining other matters. On examining the miracles of the Bible we find that they may be classified into those which involve a change of substance and those in which the substance remains the same and the change is one of quality or quantity. An example of the former is the change of Moses's rod into a serpent and of the water of Egypt into blood; of the latter, Moses's hand becoming leprous, and the withering of the hand of Jeroboam. We may further divide the mir- acles into those in which the prophet was told in advance, as Moses was of the ten plagues, and those in which he was not, as for example the reviving of the dead by Elijah and many other cases. Our examina- tion also shows us that all miracles are performed by prophets or in re- lation to them. Also that they are done with some good and useful purpose, namely, to inculcate behef or to save from evil.
These data will help us to decide who is the author of miracles. Miracles cannot be accidental, as they are performed with a purpose; and as they involve a knowledge of the sublunar order, they must have as their author one who has this knowledge, hence either God or the Active Intellect or man, i. e., the prophet himself. Now it is not reasonable to suppose that God is the author of miracles, for miracles come only rarely and are of no value in themselves but only as a means to a special end, as we said before. The laws of nature, however, which control all regular events all the time, are essentially good and permanent. Hence it is not reasonable to suppose that the Active Intellect who, as we know, orders the sublunar world, has more im- portant work to do than God. Besides if God were the author of miracles, the prophet would not know about them, for prophetic inspiration, as we know (p. 342), is due to the Active Intellect and not directly to God.
Nor do we need waste words in proving that man cannot be the author of miracles, for in that case the knowledge of them would not come to him through prophetic inspiration, since they are due to his own will. Besides man, as we have seen, cannot have a complete knowledge of the sublunar order, and hence it is not likely that he can control its laws to the extent of changing them.
There is therefore only one alternative left, namely, that the author of miracles is the same as the inspirer of the prophets, the controlling spirit of the sublunar world, whose intellect has as its content the unified system of sublunar creation as an immaterial idea, namely, the Active Intellect, of whom we have spoken so often. The prophet knows of the miracles because the Active Intellect, who is the author of them, is also the cause of the prophetic inspiration. This will account too for the fact that all miracles have to do with events in the sublunar world and are not found in the relations and motions of the heavenly bodies. The case of Joshua causing the sun and moon to stand still is no exception. There was no standing stiU of the sun and moon in that case. What is meant by the expressions in Joshua 10 is that the Israehtes conquered the enemy in the short time that the sun occupied the zenith, whUe its motion was not noticeable for about an hour, as is usually the case about noon. In the case of Isaiah moving the sun ten degrees back for Hezekiah (Isai. 38, 8), there was likewise no change in the motion of the sun, but only in that of the cloud causing the shadow.
Miracles cannot be of regular occurrence, for if natural phenomena and laws were changed by miracle as a regular thing, it would signify a defect in the original order. Miracles cannot take place to violate the principle of contradiction, hence there can be no miracles in reference to mathematical truths, nor in matters relating to the past. Thus a miracle cannot make a thing black and white at the same time; nor a plane triangle whose angles are less than two right angles; nor is it possible by miracle now to make it not to have rained in Jerusalem yesterday, when as a matter of fact it did rain. For all these involve a denial of the logical law of contradiction that a thing cannot be and not be at the same time.358
A prophet is tested (1) by being able to foretell miracles before they come, and (2) by the realization of his prophetic messages. The question is raised concerning the statement of Jeremiah that one may be a true prophet and yet an evil prophecy may remain unfulfilled if the people repent. Does this mean that a good prophecy must always come true? In that case a good deal of what comes within the category of the possible and contingent becomes determined and necessary! The answer is that a good prophecy too sometimes fails of realization, as is illustrated in Jacob's fear of Esau after he was promised protection by God. But this happens more rarely on account of the fact that a man endeavors naturally to see a good prophecy realized, whereas he does his best to counteract an evil prophecy. 359
Gersonides's entire discussion of miracles shows a deep seated motive to minimize their extent and influence. The study of science and philosophy had the effect of planting in the minds of the mediæval philosophers a great respect for reason on the one hand and natural law on the other. A study of history, archaeology and literary criticism has developed in modern times a spirit of scepticism regarding written records of antiquity. This was foreign to mediaeval theologians generally. No one doubted for a moment the accuracy of the Biblical records as well as their inspiration in every detail. Hence prophecy and miracles had to be explained or explained away. Interpretation held the place of criticism.