A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy Part 13

The faculty of the vegetative soul is the appet.i.tive power, whose seat is in the liver. Its subordinate powers are those of nutrition and growth. Through it man feels the need of food and other natural desires.

He has this in common with the lower animals. It is the first power that appears in man while he is still in his mother's womb. First comes the power which forms the combined seed of the male and the female into a human being in its proper form and nature. In doing this it requires the a.s.sistance of the "growing" power, which begins its activity as soon as the first member is formed, and continues until the period of youth is completed. This power in turn needs the a.s.sistance of the nouris.h.i.+ng power, which accompanies the other two from the beginning of their activity to the end of the person's life. All this const.i.tutes the plant soul, and it must not be supposed that these powers are separated from one another, and that one is in one place and another in another place.

_They are all spiritual powers derived from the universal powers in the upper world._

When the form of the being is complete, the animal soul makes its appearance. This soul is carried in the spirit of the animal or man, which is found in the pure blood of the arteries. There are two membranes in every artery, making two pa.s.sages, one for blood and the other for the spirit or wind. The seat of the animal soul is in the heart, and it is borne in the pure red blood. This is why we see in the heart two receptacles; in one is spirit, in the other, blood. Hence after death we find congealed blood in the one, while the other is empty. Death happens on account of the defective "mixture" of the heart.

This means that the four humors of which the body is composed, namely, blood, yellow and black gall and phlegm, lose the proper proportionality in their composition, and one or other of them predominates. An animal does not die unless the mixture of the heart is injured, or the heart is wounded seriously. Death is also caused by disease or injury of the brain. For the brain is the origin of the nerves which control the voluntary activities by means of contraction and expansion. If the chest does not contract, the warm air does not come out; if it does not expand, the cold air does not come in; and if the air does not come in or out, the heart loses its proportionality, and the animal dies. The functions of the animal soul are sensation and motion. This motion may be active as well as pa.s.sive. The active motions are those of the arteries, and the expansion and contraction of the chest which results in respiration. The pa.s.sive motions give rise to the emotions of anger, fear, shame, joy, sorrow.

Anger is the motion of the spirit within the body toward the outside, together with the blood and the humors. This is found in animals also.

Fear is the entrance of the soul within, leaving the surface of the body, and causing the extremities to become cold. Shame is a motion inward, and forthwith again outward. Sorrow is caused in the same way as fear, except that fear is sudden, while sorrow is gradual. This is why fear sometimes kills when the body is weak. Joy is motion outward. Joy may kill too, when it is very great, and the person is weak and without control. Joy is of the nature of pleasure, except that pleasure is gradual, while joy is sudden.

Pain is that feeling we have when we are taken out of our natural state and put into an unnatural. Pleasure is felt when we are restored to the natural. Take, for example, the heat of the sun. When a person is exposed to it, the sun takes him out of his natural state. Heat is then painful, and pleasure is produced by the thing which restores him to his natural state; in this case a cold spring and a drink of cold water.

Similarly a person walking in the snow and cold air feels pain by reason of the cold taking him out of his natural state. Heat then gives him pleasure by restoring him. The same thing applies to hunger and thirst, sleeping and waking, and other things which give us pleasure and pain.

Without pain there is no pleasure, and the pleasure varies in accordance with the antecedent pain.

Life is the effect of the animal soul. The disappearance of the effect does not necessarily involve the disappearance of the cause, as the disappearance of the smoke does not require the cessation of the fire.

Death means simply the separation of the soul, not the destruction thereof. It does not follow because the human soul remains after the death of the body, that the soul of the ox and the a.s.s continues likewise, for the two souls are different. Animals were created for the sake of man, whereas man exists for his own sake. Moreover, man's life is ultimately derived from his rational soul. For if the animal soul of man were the ultimate source of life, the rational soul too would be dependent for its life upon the former, and hence would be inferior to it, which is absurd. It remains then that the _rational soul gives existence to the animal soul in man_.

Sleep is the rest of the senses, as death is their entire cessation. The purpose of sleep is to give the brain rest so that the "spirit" of the soul should not be dissolved and the "mixture" of the body injured suddenly and cause death. The heart rests continually between contraction and expansion, hence it needs no special rest at night.

Waking is the activity of the senses and the exercise of their functions to satisfy the desires of the body. The motions of the soul in the waking state are in the interest of the needs of the body. During sleep the soul looks out for itself, for its better world, being then free from the business of the body. If it is pure and bright, and the body is free from the remnant of food, and the thought is not depressed by sorrow and grief--then the soul is aroused in its desire for the future, and beholds wonderful things.[172]

No one can deny that man has a rational soul because speech is an attribute which man has above all other animals. The soul is not a corporeal thing, for if it were it would have to occupy place like body, and would have color and form and other qualities like body. Moreover, it would require something else to give it life like body. In other words, the soul would require another soul, and that soul another soul, and so on _ad infinitum_, which is impossible. Hence the soul is not a corporeal thing.

Nor can we say that the soul is _in_ the body. For if it were, it would itself be body; since only body can fill the empty place in another body, as water fills a jar.

The soul is a substance and not an accident. An accident is a quality which makes its appearance in something else, and has no permanence. If then the rational soul is an accident of the body, it has no permanence, and man is sometimes rational and sometimes not. This is absurd, for in that case there could be no purpose in giving him commandments and statutes.

There are inseparable accidents to be sure, like the color of the Ethiopian's skin. But in that case we know the color is an accident despite its inseparability, from the fact that in other things color is an accident and may be removed. This will not apply to the reason. For we do not find anything in which reason is a removable accident. The moment you remove reason, you remove man, for reason is essential to man. The fact that as a result of an injury a man may lose his reason is no argument against us, for this happens only when an injury is inflicted on the brain, which is the reason's instrument. This accounts for the fact, too, that men in good health if given henbane to drink lose their reason, because the drink affects the brain. On the other hand, we see that those afflicted with a certain disease of the intestines, which causes their death, are more rational and brighter at the time of death than ever before, showing that the soul cannot be an accident depending upon the "mixture" of the body.

To regard the soul as an accident, while the body is a substance, would make the soul inferior to the body. This is absurd. For we have the body in common with the beasts; whereas it is in virtue of the reason that we are given commandments, and reward and punishment in the world to come.

If the soul is neither a corporeal thing nor an accident of body, it must be a spiritual substance. And the best definition of the soul is that of Aristotle, who says it is _a substance giving perfection to a natural organic body, which has life potentially_. Every phrase in this definition tells. "Substance" excludes the view that the soul is an accident. "Giving perfection" signifies that the soul is that which makes man perfect, bringing him to the next world, and being the purpose not merely of his creation and the composition of his body, but of the creation of matter as well. "Natural organic body" indicates that the body is an organon, or instrument in the function of the soul, the latter using the body to carry out its own purposes. The rational soul is like a king; the animal soul is like an official before the king, rebuking the appet.i.tive soul.

In the discussion of the last paragraph we have a good example of the uncritical att.i.tude of Ibn Zaddik toward the various schools of philosophical thought, particularly those represented by Plato and Aristotle. This att.i.tude is typical of the middle ages, which appealed to authority in philosophy as well as in theology, and hence developed a harmonistic att.i.tude in the presence of conflicting authorities. Aided by their defective knowledge of the complete systems of the ancient Greek philosophers, by the difficulties and obscurities incident to translations from an alien tongue, and by the spurious writings circulating in the name of an ancient Greek philosopher, the precise demarcation of schools and tendencies became more and more confused, and it was possible to prove that Plato and Aristotle were in entire agreement. Thus Ibn Zaddik has no scruple in combining (unconsciously, to be sure) Platonic and Neo-Platonic psychology with the Aristotelian definition representing quite a different point of view. The one is anthropological dualism, regarding the soul as a distinct ent.i.ty which comes to the body from without. The other is a biological monism, in which the soul is the reality of the body, the essence of its functioning, which makes the potentially living body an actually living body. We cannot enter here into a criticism of the elements of the Aristotelian definition of the soul as rendered and interpreted by Ibn Zaddik, but will merely say that it misses completely the meaning of Aristotle, and shows that Ibn Zaddik did not take it from the "De Anima"

of Aristotle, but found it without its context in some Arabic work.

To return from our digression, the three souls, Ibn Zaddik tells us, are spiritual powers; every one of them is a substance by itself of benefit to the body. The rational soul gets the name soul primarily, and the others get it from the rational soul. The _Intellect_ is called soul because the rational soul and the Intellect have a common matter. And hence when the soul is perfected it becomes intellect. This is why the rational soul is called potential intellect. The only difference between them is one of degree and excellence. The world of Intellect is superior, and its matter is the pure light, Intellect in which there is no ignorance, because it comes from G.o.d without any intermediate agency.

Here we see just a touch of the Neo-Platonic doctrine of emanation, of which the Universal Intellect is the first. But it is considerably toned down and not continued down the series as in Plotinus or the Brethren of Purity.

The accidents of the soul are spiritual like the soul itself. They are, knowledge, kindness, goodness, justice, and other similar qualities.

Ignorance, wrong, evil, and so on, are not the opposites of those mentioned above, and were not created with the soul like the others.

They are merely the absence of the positive qualities mentioned before, as darkness is the absence of light. G.o.d did not create any defect, nor did he desire it. Evil is simply the result of the incapacity of a given thing to receive a particular good. If all things were capable of receiving goods equally, all things would be one thing, and the Creator and his creatures would be likewise one. This was not G.o.d's purpose.

There is a tacit opposition to the Mutakallimun in Ibn Zaddik's arguments against the view that the soul is an accident, as well as in his statement in the preceding paragraph that the bad qualities and evil generally are not opposites of the good qualities and good respectively, but that they are merely privations, absences, and hence not created by G.o.d. This is a Neo-Platonic doctrine. Pseudo-Bahya, we have seen (p. 108 f.), and Abraham bar Hiyya (p. 123 f.) adopt the Kalamistic view in the latter point, and solve the problem of evil differently.

The function of the rational soul is knowledge. The rational soul investigates the unknown and comprehends it. It derives general rules, makes premises and infers one thing from another. Man alone has this privilege. It is in virtue of the rational soul that we have been given commandments and prohibitions, and become liable to reward and punishment. Brute animals have no commandments, because they have no reason. The soul has reason only potentially, and man makes it actual by study. If the reason were actual originally in the soul, there would be no difference between the soul's condition in its own world and in this one; and the purpose of man, which is that he may learn in order to choose the right way and win salvation, would have no meaning.

The existence of many individual souls, all of which have the soul character in common, shows that there is a universal soul by virtue of which all the particular souls exist. This division of the universal soul into many individual souls is not really a division of the former in its essence, which remains one and indivisible. It is the bodies which receive the influence of the universal soul, as vessels in the sun receive its light according to their purity. Hence the existence of justice and evil, righteousness and wrong. This does not, however, mean to say that the reception of these qualities is independent of a man's choice. Man is free to choose, and hence he deserves praise and blame, reward and punishment.

The rational soul is destined for the spiritual world, which is a pure and perfect world, made by G.o.d directly without an intermediate agency.

It is not subject to change or defect or need. G.o.d alone created this spiritual world to show his goodness and power, and not because he needed it. The world is not like G.o.d, though G.o.d is its cause. It is not eternal _a parte ante_, having been made out of nothing by G.o.d; but it will continue to exist forever, for it cannot be more perfect than it is. It is simple and spiritual. This applies also to the heavenly spheres and their stars.

Man is obliged to reason and investigate, as all nations do according to the measure of their capacities. No animal reasons because it has not the requisite faculty. But if man should neglect to exercise the power given him, he would lose the benefit coming therefrom and the purpose of his existence. There would then be no difference between him and the beast.

The first requisite for study and investigation is to deaden the animal desires. Then with the reason as a guide and his body as a model, man acquires the knowledge of the corporeal world. From his rational soul he comes to the knowledge of the existence of a spiritual world. Finally he will learn to know the Creator, who is the only real existent, for nothing can be said truly to exist, which at one time did not exist, or which at some time will cease to exist. When a man neglects this privilege which is his of using his reason, he forfeits the name man, and descends below the station of the beast, for the latter never falls below its animal nature.

It is very important to study the knowledge of G.o.d, for it is the highest knowledge and the cause of human perfection. The prophets are full of recommendations in this regard. Jeremiah says (31, 33), "They shall all know me, from the least of them even unto their greatest."

Amos (5, 6) bids us "Seek for the Lord and you shall live." Hosea likewise (6, 3) recommends that "We may feel it, and strive to know the Lord."[173]

The first loss a man suffers who does not study and investigate is that he does not understand the real existence of G.o.d, and imagines he is wors.h.i.+pping a body. Some think G.o.d is light. But this is as bad as to regard him body. For light is an accident in a s.h.i.+ning body, as is proved by the fact that the air receives the light of the sun, and later it receives the shadow and becomes dark. And yet these people are not the worst by any means, for there are others who do not trouble to concentrate their minds on G.o.d, and occupy their thoughts solely with the business and the pleasures of this world. These people we do not discuss at all. We are arguing against those who imagine they are wise men and students of the Kalam. In fact they are ignorant persons, and do not know what logic is and how it is to be used.

Before giving our own views of the nature and existence of G.o.d, we must refute the objectionable doctrines of these people. Joseph al-Basir in a work of his called "Mansuri" casts it up to the Rabbanites that in believing that G.o.d descends and ascends they are not true wors.h.i.+ppers of G.o.d. But he forgets that his own doctrines are no better. Anyone who believes that G.o.d created with a newly created will and rejects by means of a newly created rejection has never truly served G.o.d or known him.

Just as objectionable is their view that G.o.d is living but not with life residing in a subject, powerful but not with power, and so on. We shall take up each of these in turn.

The Mutakallimun refuse to believe that G.o.d's will is eternal, for fear of having a second eternal beside G.o.d. And so they say that whenever G.o.d wills, he creates a will for the purpose, and whenever he rejects anything he creates a "rejection" with which the objectionable thing is rejected. But this leads them to a worse predicament than the one from which they wish to escape, as we shall see. If G.o.d cannot create anything without having a will as the instrument in creating, and for this reason must first create a will for the purpose--how did he create this will? He must have had another will to create this will, and a third will to create the second, and so on _ad infinitum_, which is absurd. If he created the first will without the help of another will, why not create the things he wanted outright without any will? Besides, in making G.o.d will at a given time after a state of not willing, they introduce change in G.o.d.

As for the other dictum, that G.o.d is "living but not with life,"

"powerful but not with power," "knowing but not with knowledge," and so on; what do they mean by this circ.u.mlocution? If they say "living" to indicate that he is not dead, and add "but not with life," so as to prevent a comparison of him with other living things, why not say also, "He is body, but not like other bodies"? If the objection to calling him body is that body is composite, and what is composite must have been composed by someone and is not eternal, the same objection applies to "living." For "living" implies "breathing" and "possessed of sensation,"

hence also composite and created. If they reply, we mean life peculiar to him, we say why not also body peculiar to him? You see these people entangle themselves in their own sophisms, because they do not know what demonstration means.[174]

Having disposed of the errors of the Mutakallimun, we must now present our own method of investigation into the nature of G.o.d. To know a thing, we investigate its four causes--material, formal, efficient and final.

What has no cause but is the cause of all things, cannot be known in this way. Still it is not altogether unknowable for this reason. Its essence cannot be known, but it may be known through its activities, or rather effects, which suggest attributes. We cannot therefore know concerning G.o.d _what_ he is, nor _how_ he is, nor _on account of what_, nor _of what kind_, nor _where_, nor _when_. For these can apply only to a created thing having a cause. But we can ask concerning him, _whether_ he is; and this can best be known from his deeds.

We observe the things of the world and find that they are all composed of substance and accident, as we saw before (p. 131). These are correlative, and one cannot exist without the other. Hence neither precedes the other. But accident is "new" (_i. e._, not eternal), hence so is substance. That accident is new is proved from the fact that rest succeeds motion and motion succeeds rest, hence accidents constantly come and go and are newly created.

Now if substance and accident are both new there must be something that brought them into being unless they bring themselves into being. But the latter is impossible, for the agent must either exist when it brings itself into being, or not. If it exists it is already there; if it does not exist, it is nothing, and nothing cannot do anything. Hence there must be a being that brought the world into existence. This is G.o.d.

G.o.d is one, for the cause of the many must be the one. If the cause of the many is the many, then the cause of the second many is a third many, and so on _ad infinitum_; hence we must stop with the one. G.o.d is to the world as unity is to number. Unity is the basis of number without being included in number, and it embraces number on all sides. It is the foundation of number; for if you remove unity, you remove number; but the removal of number does not remove unity. The one surrounds number on all sides; for the beginning of number is the one, and it is also the middle of number and the end thereof. For number is nothing but an aggregate of ones. Besides, number is composed of odds and evens, and one is the cause of odd as well as even.

If there were two eternal beings, they would either coincide in all respects, and they would be one and not two. Or they would differ. In the latter case, the world is either the work of both or of one only.

If of both, they are not omnipotent, and hence not eternal. If of one only, then the other does not count, since he is not eternal, and there is only one.

By saying G.o.d is one we do not mean that he comes under the category of quant.i.ty, for quant.i.ty is an accident residing in a substance, and all substance is "new." What we mean is that the essence of G.o.d is true unity, not numerical unity. For numerical unity is also in a sense multiplicity, and is capable of multiplication and division. G.o.d's unity is alone separate and one in all respects.

G.o.d is not like any of his creatures. For if he were, he would be possessed of quality, since it is in virtue of quality that a thing is said to be like another, and quality is an accident contained in a substance.

G.o.d is self-sufficient and not in need of anything. For if he needed anything at all, it would be first of all the one who created him and made him an existent thing. But this is absurd, since G.o.d is eternal. We might suppose that he needs the world, which he created for some purpose, as we sometimes make things to a.s.sist us. But this, too, is impossible. For if he were dependent upon the world for anything, he could not create it. It is different with us. We do not create things; we only modify matter already existing.

Again, if G.o.d created the world for his own benefit, then either he was always in need of the world, or the need arose at the time of creating.

If he was always in need of the world, it would have existed with him from eternity, but we have already proved that the world is not eternal.

If the need arose in him at the time of creation, as heat arises in a body after cold, or motion after rest, then he is like created things, and is himself "new" and not eternal. To say the need was always there, and yet he did not create it until the time he did would be to ascribe inability to G.o.d of creating the world before he did, which is absurd.

For one who is unable at any given time, cannot create at all. It remains then that he does not need anything, and that he created the world by reason of his goodness and generosity and nothing else.

The question of G.o.d's will is difficult. The problem is this. If G.o.d's will is eternal and unchanging, and he created the world with his will, the world is eternal. If we say, as we must, that he created the world after a condition of non-creation, we introduce a change in G.o.d, a something newly created in him, namely, the will to create, which did not exist before. This is a dilemma. My own view is that since G.o.d's creating activity is his essence, and his essence is infinite and eternal, we cannot say he created _after_ a condition of non-creation, or that he willed _after_ a condition of non-willing, or that he was formerly not able. And yet we do not mean that the world is eternal. It was created a definite length of time before our time. The solution of the problem is that time itself was created with the world; for time is the measure of motion of the celestial sphere, and if there are no spheres there is no time, and no before and after. Hence it does not follow because the world is not eternal that _before_ its creation G.o.d did not create. There is no _before_ when the world is not.

We objected to the view of the Mutakallimun (p. 142), who speak of G.o.d creating a will on the ground that if he can create a will directly he can create the world instead. Our opinion is therefore that G.o.d's will is eternal and not newly created, for the latter view introduces creation in G.o.d. There is still the difficulty of the precise relation of the will to G.o.d. If it is different from G.o.d we have two eternals, and if it is the same as G.o.d in all respects, he changes when he creates. My answer is, it is not different from G.o.d in any sense, and there is no changing attribute in G.o.d. But there is a subtle mystery in this matter, which it is not proper to reveal, and this is not the place to explain it. The interested reader is referred to the book of Empedocles and other works of the wise men treating of this subject (_cf._ above, p. 64).

G.o.d created the world out of nothing, and not out of a pre-existent matter. For if the matter of the world is eternal like G.o.d, there is no more reason for supposing that G.o.d formed a world out of it than that it formed a world out of G.o.d.