Part 18

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnote 86:

[Maimonides died on the 13th December, 1204.]

Footnote 87:

[Jewish Law.]

Footnote 88:

[Allusion to well-known speeches at Zionist Congresses.]

Footnote 89:

_Mishneh Torah, Foundations of the Law_, chaps. i.-iv.

Footnote 90:

_Ibid._, chap. iv. 1.

Footnote 91:

_Guide_, Part I., chap. i. [In rendering quotations from the _Moreh Nebuchim_ (_Guide for the Perplexed_) the translator has used Dr. Friedländer’s English version so far as possible.]

Footnote 92:

_Foundations of the Law_, _ibid._, 7.

Footnote 93:

In the upper world Aristotle’s philosophy postulates the existence of forms divorced from matter: they are the “separate Intelligences,” which emanate one from another and are eternal (see _Foundations of the Law_, _ibid._, and _Guide_, Part II., chap. iv.).

Footnote 94:

_Guide_, Part III., chap. viii.

Footnote 95:

_Foundations of the Law_, _ibid._, 8 and 9.

Footnote 96:

_Eight Chapters_, chap. i.

Footnote 97:

See Munk, _Le Guide des Egarés_, I., pp. 304-8 (note).

Footnote 98:

_Guide_, Part I., chaps. lxx. and lxxii. and _passim_. For details see Munk (_ibid._), and Dr. Scheyer’s monograph, _Das Psychologische System des Maimonides_, Frankfort a/M, 1845.

Footnote 99:

_Foundations of the Law_, chap. iv., 8, 9.

Footnote 100:

There is some ground for thinking that Maimonides thought of the eternal existence after death of the possessors of “acquired intellect” not as personal, but as a common existence in which they are all united as a single separate being. See _Guide_, III., chap. xxvii., and _Foundations_, _ibid._, and chap. ii., 5-6. This has been pointed out by Dr. Joel in _Die Religionsphilosophie des Mose ben Maimon_, Breslau, 1876 (p. 25, note).

Footnote 101:

_Guide_, I., chap. lxviii.

Footnote 102:

According to the division of the sciences current in those days, all this knowledge of true Being is contained in Physics and Metaphysics.

Footnote 103:

All this teaching is scattered up and down Maimonides’ works, partly in explicit statements and partly in hints (see, _e.g._, _Guide_, III., chap. li.). Dr. Scheyer was the first to work out these definitions in detail (_ibid._, chap. iii.). In general it must be remembered that Maimonides nowhere explains his whole system in logical order, and we are therefore compelled, if we would understand his system as it was conceived in his mind, to make use of scattered utterances, hints, and half-sentences written by the way, to explain obscure statements by others more precise, and to resort freely to inference.

Footnote 104:

_Guide_, III., chap. xiii., and Introduction to _Commentary on the Mishnah_, section _Zera’im_.

Footnote 105:

Introduction cited in last note.

Footnote 106:

_Ibid._

Footnote 107:

_Guide_, III., chap. li. Maimonides does not there emphasise the difference between practical studies on the one hand and mathematics and logic on the other, because this is not germane to his purpose at the moment. But the distinction is necessarily implied.

Footnote 108:

_Guide_, III., chaps. xxvii. and liv.; _Hilchoth De’oth_, chaps. iii. and iv.

Footnote 109:

Introduction to _Zera’im_.

Footnote 110:

Maimonides’ attitude to perfection of character is most clearly revealed by the fact that he calls it “bodily perfection,” in contrast to “perfection of the soul,” which is _intellectual_ perfection (_Guide_, III., chap. xxvii.).

Footnote 111:

See _Hilchoth De’oth_, chap. i.; _Eight Chapters_, chap. iv.

Footnote 112:

_Guide_, III., chap. liv.

Footnote 113:

See _Eight Chapters_, end of chap. iv. and beginning of chap. v. Lazarus (_Ethik des Judentums_, I., chap. xiv.) fails to notice this difference between Aristotle and Maimonides, and therefore finds it strange that Maimonides introduces Aristotle’s doctrine of the mean into Jewish ethics.

Footnote 114:

Introduction to _Zera’im_.

Footnote 115:

See _Guide_, III., chaps. xxvii., xxxiv. Maimonides is not explicit on the relation of the minority to social morality; but his view on this question is evident from what he says in the chapters quoted, and _passim._

Footnote 116:

_Eight Chapters_, chap. v.

Footnote 117:

_Guide_, II., chap. xxv.

Footnote 118:

_Guide_, II., chaps. xxv. and xvi.

Footnote 119:

Maimonides explains his views on the methods of divine revelation and the nature of prophecy in general, and of the prophecy of Moses in particular, in several places: especially in _Guide_, II., chaps. xxxii.-xlviii., and in _Mishneh Torah_, section _Foundations of the Law_, chap. vii. But for our present purpose we need not enter into these speculations. It suffices to say that here also he was true to his own system. The Prophet is for him the most perfect “actual man”; and the divine inspiration reaches the Prophet through that separate Intelligence (“active intellect”) which is, according to the philosophical system adopted by Maimonides, charged with the guidance of the world and with the raising of all forms (including the form of the soul) from potentiality to actuality.

Footnote 120:

See _Guide_, III., xxvi.

Footnote 121:

_Ibid._, chaps. xxiii. and xxviii.; see also II., chaps. xxxiv. and xl.

Footnote 122:

See _Guide_, II., chaps. xxxix. and xl.; and especially the _Iggereth Teman_.

Footnote 123:

All this is explained in many passages throughout Maimonides’ books, which are too numerous to be particularised.

Footnote 124:

For the “reasons of the commandments” see _Guide_, III., chaps. xxvi.-xlix.

Footnote 125:

For instance: there is a reason for sacrifices in general. “But we cannot say why one offering should be a lamb, whilst another is a ram; and why a fixed number of them should be brought.... You ask why must a lamb be sacrificed and not a ram? but the same question would be asked, why a ram had been commanded instead of a lamb, so long as one particular kind is required. The same is to be said as to the question why were seven lambs sacrificed and not eight; the same question might have been asked if there were eight.” _Guide_, III., chap. xxvi.

Footnote 126:

Introduction to _Zera’im_.

Footnote 127:

_Guide_, II., chap. xxxix., and III., chap. xxxiv.

Footnote 128:

See _Guide_, II., chap. xxix.; _Eight Chapters_, chap. viii.

Footnote 129:

Introduction to _Zera’im_; see also _Foundations of the Law_, chaps. ix. and x.

Footnote 130:

_Guide_, III., chap. li.

Footnote 131:

See R. Shem-Tob’s Commentary on the _Guide_, _loc. cit._

Footnote 132:

_Ibid._

Footnote 133:

Maimonides himself describes the contemporary state of culture among his people in several places. See, for instance, the _Treatise on Resurrection_.

Footnote 134:

_Emunoth v’ Deoth_, Preface.

Footnote 135:

R. Jehudah Halevi, despite his profound knowledge of contemporary philosophy, says categorically: “He who accepts this [the Law] completely, without scrutiny or argument, is better off than he who investigates and analyses” (_Cuzri_, II., xxvi. [Dr. Hirschfeld’s translation]).

Footnote 136:

_Guide_, I., chap. lxxi.

Footnote 137:

As to the state of mind of the forced converts at that time see what Maimonides says in the _Treatise of the Sanctification of the Name_ and the _Iggereth Teman_.

Footnote 138:

See Section II. above. Note especially what Maimonides says about prophecy in the Introduction to his _Commentary on the Mishnah_ (written at the time when he lived among the forced converts). Some of this is quoted in Section II. He writes there with such incisive force as to make it clear that he has left the realm of pure speculation and theory, and has a practical object connected with actual circumstances which had stirred him deeply at the time.

Footnote 139:

All this is clearly hinted in Maimonides’ _Treatise of the Sanctification of the Name_.

Footnote 140:

_Guide_, III., chap. xxvii.

Footnote 141: