Conclusion 192
PART I.
Pre-Islamic Persian Philosophy.
CHAP. I.
PERSIAN DUALISM.
§ I.
Zoroaster.
To Zoroaster--the ancient sage of Iran--must always be assigned the
first place in the intellectual history of Iranian Aryans who, wearied
of constant roaming, settled down to an agricultural life at a time when
the Vedic Hymns were still being composed in the plains of Central Asia.
This new mode of life and the consequent stability of the institution of
property among the settlers, made them hated by other Aryan tribes who
had not yet shaken off their original nomadic habits, and occasionally
plundered their more civilised kinsmen. Thus grew up the conflict
between the two modes of life which found its earliest expression in the
denunciation of the deities of each other--the Devas and the Ahuras. It
was really the beginning of a long individualising process which
gradually severed the Iranian branch from other Aryan tribes, and
finally manifested itself in the religious system of Zoroaster[2:1]--the
great prophet of Iran who lived and taught in the age of Solon and
Thales. In the dim light of modern oriental research we see ancient
Iranians divided between two camps--partisans of the powers of good, and
partisans of the powers of evil--when the great sage joins their furious
contest, and with his moral enthusiasm stamps out once for all the
worship of demons as well as the intolerable ritual of the Magian
priesthood.
[2:1] Some European Scholars have held Zoroaster to be nothing
more than a mythical personage. But since the publication of
Professor Jackson's admirable Life of Zoroaster, the Iranian
Prophet has, I believe, finally got out of the ordeal of modern
criticism.
It is, however, beside our purpose to trace the origin and growth of
Zoroaster's religious system. Our object, in so far as the present
investigation is concerned, is to glance at the metaphysical side of
his revelation. We, therefore, wish to fix our attention on the sacred
trinity of philosophy--God, Man and Nature.
Geiger, in his "Civilisation of Eastern Iranians in Ancient Times",
points out that Zoroaster inherited two fundamental principles from his
Aryan ancestry.--(1) There is law in Nature. (2) There is conflict in
Nature. It is the observation of law and conflict in the vast panorama
of being that constitutes the philosophical foundation of his system.
The problem before him was to reconcile the existence of evil with the
eternal goodness of God. His predecessors worshipped a plurality of good
spirits all of which he reduced to a unity and called it Ahuramazda. On
the other hand he reduced all the powers of evil to a similar unity and
called it Druj-Ahriman. Thus by a process of unification he arrived at
two fundamental principles which, as Haug shows, he looked upon not as
two independent activities, but as two parts or rather aspects of the
same Primary Being. Dr. Haug, therefore, holds that the Prophet of
ancient Iran was theologically a monotheist and philosophically a
dualist.[4:1] But to maintain that there are "twin"[4:2]
spirits--creators of reality and nonreality--and at the same time to
hold that these two spirits are united in the Supreme Being,[4:3] is
virtually to say that the principle of evil constitutes a part of the
very essence of God; and the conflict between good and evil is nothing
more than the struggle of God against Himself. There is, therefore, an
inherent weakness in his attempt to reconcile theological monotheism
with philosophical dualism, and the result was a schism among the
prophet's followers. The Zendiks[4:4] whom Dr. Haug calls heretics, but
who were, I believe, decidedly more consistent than their opponents,
maintained the independence of the two original spirits from each other,
while the Magi upheld their unity. The upholders of unity endeavoured,
in various ways, to meet the Zendiks; but the very fact that they tried
different phrases and expressions to express the unity of the "Primal
Twins", indicates dissatisfaction with their own philosophical
explanations, and the strength of their opponent's position.
S̱ẖahrastānī[5:1] describes briefly the different explanations of the
Magi. The Zarwānians look upon Light and Darkness as the sons of
Infinite Time. The Kiyūmarṯẖiyya hold that the original principle was
Light which was afraid of a hostile power, and it was this thought of an
adversary mixed with fear that led to the birth of Darkness. Another
branch of Zarwānians maintain that the original principle doubted
concerning something and this doubt produced Ahriman. Ibn Ḥazm[5:2]
speaks of another sect who explained the principle of Darkness as the
obscuration of a part of the fundamental principle of Light itself.
[4:1] Essays, p. 303.
[4:2] "In the beginning there was a pair of twins, two spirits,
each of a peculiar activity". Yas. XXX. 1.
[4:3] "The more beneficial of my spirits has produced, by
speaking it, the whole rightful creation". Yas. XIX. 9.
[4:4] The following verse from Buudahish Chap. I. will indicate
the Zendik view:-- "And between them (the two principles) there
was empty space, that is what they call "air" in which is now
their meeting".
[5:1] S̱ẖahrastānī; ed. Cureton, London, 1846, pp. 182–185.
[5:2] Ibn Ḥazm--Kitāb al-Milal w’al-Niḥal. Ed. Cairo. Vol. II,
p. 34.
Whether the philosophical dualism of Zoroaster can be reconciled with
his monotheism or not, it is unquestionable that, from a metaphysical
standpoint, he has made a profound suggestion in regard to the ultimate
nature of reality. The idea seems to have influenced ancient Greek
Philosophy[6:1] as well as early Christian Gnostic speculation, and
through the latter, some aspects of modern western thought.[6:2] As a
thinker he is worthy of great respect not only because he approached the
problem of objective multiplicity in a philosophical spirit; but also
because he endeavoured, having been led to metaphysical dualism, to
reduce his Primary Duality to a higher unity. He seems to have
perceived, what the mystic shoemaker of Germany perceived long after
him, that the diversity of nature could not be explained without
postulating a principle of negativity or self-differentiation in the
very nature of God. His immediate successors did not, however, quite
realise the deep significance of their master's suggestions; but we
shall see, as we advance, how Zoroaster's idea finds a more
spiritualised expression in some of the aspects of later Persian
thought.
[6:1] In connection with the influence of Zoroastrian ideas on
Ancient Greek thought, the following statement made by Erdmann
is noteworthy, though Lawrence Mills (American Journal of
Philology Vol. 22) regards such influence as improbable:--"The
fact that the handmaids of this force, which he (Heraclitus)
calls the seed of all that happens and the measure of all order,
are entitled the "tongues" has probably been slightly ascribed
to the influence of the Persian Magi. On the other hand he
connects himself with his country's mythology, not indeed
without a change of exegesis when he places Apollo and Dionysus
beside Zeus, i.e. The ultimate fire, as the two aspects of his
nature". History of Philosophy Vol. I, p. 50.
It is, perhaps, owing to this doubtful influence of
Zoroastrianism on Heraclitus that Lassalle (quoted by Paul Janet
in his History of the Problems of Philosophy Vol. II, p. 147)
looks upon Zoroaster as a precursor of Hegel.
Of Zoroastrian influence on Pythagoras Erdmann says:--
"The fact that the odd numbers are put above the even has been
emphasised by Gladisch in his comparison of the Pythagorian with
the Chinese doctrine, and the fact, moreover, that among the
oppositions we find those of light and darkness, good and evil,
has induced many, in ancient and modern times, to suppose that
they were borrowed from Zoroastrianism." Vol. I, p. 33.
[6:2] Among modern English thinkers Mr. Bradley arrives at a
conclusion similar to that of Zoroaster. Discussing the ethical
significance of Bradley's Philosophy, Prof. Sorley says:--"Mr.
Bradley, like Green, has faith in an eternal reality which might
be called spiritual, inasmuch as it is not material; like Green
he looks upon man's moral activity as an appearance--what Green
calls a reproduction--of this eternal reality. But under this
general agreement there lies a world of difference. He refuses
by the use of the term self-conscious, to liken his Absolute to
the personality of man, and he brings out the consequence which
in Green is more or less concealed, that the evil equally with
the good in man and in the world are appearances of the
Absolute". Recent tendencies in Ethics, pp. 100–101.
Turning now to his Cosmology, his dualism leads him to bifurcate, as it
were, the whole universe into two departments of being--reality i.e.
the sum of all good creations flowing from the creative activity of the
beneficial spirit, and non-reality[8:1] i.e. the sum of all evil
creations proceeding from the hostile spirit. The original conflict of
the two spirits is manifested in the opposing forces of nature, which,
therefore, presents a continual struggle between the powers of Good and
the powers of Evil. But it should be remembered that nothing intervenes
between the original spirits and their respective creations. Things are
good and bad because they proceed from good or bad creative agencies, in
their own nature they are quite indifferent. Zoroaster's conception of
creation is fundamentally different from that of Plato and Schopenhauer
to whom spheres of empirical reality reflect non-temporal or temporal
ideas which, so to speak, mediate between Reality and Appearance. There
are, according to Zoroaster, only two categories of existence, and the
history of the universe is nothing more than a progressive conflict
between the forces falling respectively under these categories. We are,
like other things, partakers of this struggle, and it is our duty to
range ourselves on the side of Light which will eventually prevail and
completely vanquish the spirit of Darkness. The metaphysics of the
Iranian Prophet, like that of Plato, passes on into Ethics, and it is in
the peculiarity of the Ethical aspect of his thought that the influence
of his social environment is most apparent.
[8:1] This should not be confounded with Plato's non-being. To
Zoroaster all forms of existence proceeding from the creative
agency of the spirit of darkness are unreal; because,
considering the final triumph of the spirit of Light, they have
a temporary existence only.
Zoroaster's view of the destiny of the soul is very simple. The soul,
according to him, is a creation, not a part of God as the votaries of
Mithra[9:1] afterwards maintained. It had a beginning in time, but can
attain to everlasting life by fighting against Evil in the earthly scene
of its activity. It is free to choose between the only two courses of
action--good and evil; and besides the power of choice the spirit of
Light has endowed it with the following faculties:--
1. Conscience[10:1].
2. Vital force.
3. The Soul--The Mind.
4. The Spirit--Reason.
5. The Farāwas̱ẖi[10:2].--A kind of tutelary spirit which acts
as a protection of man in his voyage towards God.
The last three[10:3] faculties are united together after death, and form
an indissoluble whole. The virtuous soul, leaving its home of flesh, is
borne up into higher regions, and has to pass through the following
planes of existence:--
1. The Place of good thoughts.
2. The Place of good words.
3. The Place of good works.
4. The Place of Eternal Glory[11:1].--Where the individual soul
unites with the principle of Light without losing its
personality.
[9:1] Mithraism was a phase of Zoroastrianism which spread over
the Roman world in the second century. The partisans of Mithra
worshipped the sun whom they looked upon as the great advocate
of Light. They held the human soul to be a part of God, and
maintained that the observance of a mysterious cult could bring
about the souls' union with God. Their doctrine of the soul, its
ascent towards God by torturing the body and finally passing
through the sphere of Aether and becoming pure fire, offers some
resemblance with views entertained by some schools of Persian
Ṣūfīism.
[10:1] Geiger's Civilisation of Eastern Iranians, Vol. I,
p. 124.
[10:2] Dr. Haug (Essays p. 206) compares these protecting
spirits with the ideas of Plato. They, however, are not to be
understood as models according to which things are fashioned.
Plato's ideas, moreover, are eternal, non-temporal and
non-spatial. The doctrine that everything created by the spirit
of Light is protected by a subordinate spirit has only an
outward resemblance with the view that every spirit is fashioned
according to a perfect supersensible model.
[10:3] The Ṣūfī conception of the soul is also tripartite.
According to them the soul is a combination of Mind, heart and
spirit (Nafs, Qalb, Rūḥ). The "heart" is to them both material
and immaterial or, more properly, neither--standing midway
between soul and mind (Nafs and Rūḥ), and acting as the organ of
higher knowledge. Perhaps Dr. Schenkel's use of the word
"conscience" would approach the ṣūfī idea of "heart".
[11:1] Geiger Vol. I, p. 104. (The ṣūfī Cosmology has a similar
doctrine concerning the different stages of existence through
which the soul has to pass in its journey heavenward. They
enumerate the following five Planes; but their definition of the
character of each plane is slightly different:--
1. The world of body. (Nāsūt).
2. The world of pure intelligence. (Malakūt).
3. The world of power. (Jabrūt).
4. The world of negation. (Lāhūt).
5. The world of Absolute Silence. (Hāhūt).
The ṣūfīs probably borrowed this idea from the Indian Yogīs who
recognise the following seven Planes:--(Annie Besant:
Reincarnation, p. 30).
1. The Plane of Physical Body.
2. The Plane of Etherial double.
3. The Plane of Vitality.
4. The Plane of Emotional Nature.
5. The Plane of Thought.
6. The Plane of Spiritual soul--Reason.
7. The Plane of Pure Spirit.)
§ II.
Mānī[12:1] and Mazdak[12:2].
We have seen Zoroaster's solution of the problem of diversity, and the
theological or rather philosophical controversy which split up the
Zoroastrian Church. The half-Persian Mānī--"the founder of Godless
community" as Christians styled him afterwards--agrees with those
Zoroastrians who held the Prophet's doctrine in its naked form, and
approaches the question in a spirit thoroughly materialistic.
Originally Persian his father emigrated from Hamadān to Babylonia where
Mānī was born in 215 or 216 A.D.--the time when Buddhistic Missionaries
were beginning to preach Nirvāna to the country of Zoroaster. The
eclectic character of the religious system of Mānī, its bold extension
of the Christian idea of redemption, and its logical consistency in
holding, as a true ground for an ascetic life, that the world is
essentially evil, made it a real power which influenced not only Eastern
and Western Christian thought[13:1], but has also left some dim marks on
the development of metaphysical speculation in Persia. Leaving the
discussion of the sources[13:2] of Mānī's religious system to the
orientalist, we proceed to describe and finally to determine the
philosophical value of his doctrine of the origin of the Phenomenal
Universe.
[12:1] Sources used:--
(a) The text of Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, edited by Flügel, pp.
52–56.
(b) Al-Ya‘qūbī: ed. Houtsma, 1883, Vol. I, pp. 180–181.
(c) Ibn Ḥazm: Kitāb al-Milal w’al-Niḥal: ed. Cairo, Vol. II,
p. 36.
(d) S̱ẖahrastānī: ed. Cureton, London, 1846, pp. 188–192.
(e) Encyclopaedia Britannica, Article on Mānī.
(f) Salemann: Bulletin de l'Académie des Sciences de St.
Petersburg Series IV, 15 April 1907, pp. 175--184. F. W.
K. Müller: Handschriften--Reste in Estrangelo--Schrift
aus Turfan, Chinesisch--Turkistan, Teil I, II; Sitzungen
der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften,
11 Feb. 1904, pp. 348–352; und Abhandlungen etc. 1904.
[12:2] Sources used:--
(a) Siyāsat Nāmah Nizām al-Mulk: ed. Charles Schefer,
Paris, 1897, pp. 166–181.
(b) S̱ẖahrastānī: ed. Cureton, pp. 192–194.
(c) Al-Ya‘qūbī: ed. Houtsma, 1883, Vol. I, p. 186.
(d) Al-Bīrūnī: Chronology of Ancient Nations: tr. E. Sachau,
London, 1879, p. 192.
[13:1] "If I see aright, five different conceptions can be
distinguished for the period about 400 A.D. First we have the
Manichaean which insinuated its way in the darkness, but was
widely extended even among the clergy". (Harnack's History of
Christian Dogma, Vol. V, p. 56). "From the anti-Manichaean
controversy sprang the desire to conceive all God's attributes
as identical i.e. the interest in the indivisibility of God",
(Harnack's History of Christian Dogma, Vol V, p. 120).
[13:2] Some Eastern sources of information about Mānī's
Philosophy (e.g. Ephraim Syrus mentioned by Prof. A. A. Bevan in
his Introduction to the Hymn of the Soul) tell us that he was a
disciple of Bardesanes, the Syrian gnostic. The learned author
of "al-Fihrist", however, mentions some books which Mānī wrote
against the followers of the Syrian gnostic. Burkitt, in his
lectures on Early Eastern Christianity, gives a free translation
of Bardesanes' De Fato, the spirit of which I understand, is
fully Christian, and thoroughly opposed to the teaching of Mānī.
Ibn Ḥazm, however, in his Kitāb al-Milal w’al-Niḥal (Vol. II, p.
36) says, "Both agreed in other respects, except that Mānī
believed darkness to be a living principle."
The Paganising gnostic, as Erdmann calls him, teaches that the variety
of things springs from the mixture of two eternal Principles--Light and
Darkness--which are separate from and independent of each other. The
Principle of Light connotes ten ideas--Gentleness, Knowledge,
Understanding, Mystery, Insight, Love, Conviction, Faith, Benevolence
and Wisdom. Similarly the Principle of Darkness connotes five eternal
ideas--Mistiness, Heat, Fire, Venom, Darkness. Along with these two
primordial principles and connected with each, Mānī recognises the
eternity of space and earth, each connoting respectively the ideas of
knowledge, understanding, mystery, insight, breath, air, water, light
and fire. In darkness--the feminine Principle in Nature--were hidden
the elements of evil which, in course of time, concentrated and resulted
in the composition, so to speak, of the hideous looking Devil--the
principle of activity. This first born child of the fiery womb of
darkness, attacked the domain of the King of Light who, in order to ward
off his malicious onslaught, created the Primal man. A serious conflict
ensued between the two creatures, and resulted in the complete
vanquishment of the Primal Man. The evil one, then, succeeded in mixing
together the five elements of darkness with the five elements of light.
Thereupon the ruler of the domain of light ordered some of his angels to
construct the Universe out of these mixed elements with a view to free
the atoms of light from their imprisonment. But the reason why darkness
was the first to attack light, is that the latter, being in its essence
good, could not proceed to start the process of admixture which was
essentially harmful to itself. The attitude of Mānī's Cosmology,
therefore, to the Christian doctrine of Redemption is similar to that of
Hegelian Cosmology to the doctrine of the Trinity. To him redemption is
a physical process, and all procreation, because it protracts the
imprisonment of light, is contrary to the aim and object of the
Universe. The imprisoned atoms of light are continually set free from
darkness which is thrown down in the unfathomable ditch round the
Universe. The liberated light, however, passes on to the sun and the
moon whence it is carried by angels to the region of light--the eternal
home of the King of Paradise--"Pîd i vazargîî"--Father of greatness.
This is a brief account of Mānī's fantastic Cosmology.[16:1] He rejects
the Zoroastrian hypothesis of creative agencies to explain the problem
of objective existence. Taking a thoroughly materialistic view of the
question, he ascribes the phenomenal universe to the _mixture_ of two
independent, eternal principles, one of which (darkness) is not only a
part of the universe--stuff, but also the source wherein activity
resides, as it were, slumbering, and starts up into being when the
favourable moment arrives. The essential idea of his cosmology,
therefore, has a curious resemblance with that of the great Hindū
thinker Kapila, who accounts for the production of the universe by the
hypothesis of three gunas, i.e. Sattwa (goodness), Tamas (darkness), and
Rajas (motion or passion) which mix together to form Nature, when the
equilibrium of the primordial matter (Prakritī) is upset. Of the various
solutions[17:1] of the problem of diversity which the Vedāntist solved
by postulating the mysterious power of "Māyā", and Leibniz, long
afterwards, explained by his doctrine of the Identity of Indiscernibles,
Mānī's solution, though childish, must find a place in the historical
development of philosophical ideas. Its philosophical value may be
insignificant; but one thing is certain, i.e. Mānī was the first to
venture the suggestion that the Universe is due to the activity of the
Devil, and hence essentially evil--a proposition which seems to me to be
the only logical justification of a system which preaches renunciation
as the guiding principle of life. In our own times Schopenhauer has been
led to the same conclusion; though, unlike Mānī, he supposes the
principle of objectification or individuation--"the sinful bent" of the
will to life--to exist in the very nature of the Primal Will and not
independent of it.
[16:1] It is interesting to compare Mānī's Philosophy of Nature
with the Chinese notion of Creation, according to which all that
exists flows from the Union of Yin and Yang. But the Chinese
reduced these two principles to a higher unity:--Tai Keih. To
Mānī such a reduction was not possible; since he could not
conceive that things of opposite nature could proceed from the
same principle.
[17:1] Thomas Aquinas states and criticises Mānī's contrariety
of Primal agents in the following manner:--
(a) What all things seek even a principle of evil would seek.
But all things seek their own self-preservation.
⁂ Even a principle of evil would seek its own self-preservation.
(b) What all things seek is good.
But self-preservation is what all things seek.
⁂ Self-preservation is good.
But a principle of evil would seek its own self-preservation.
⁂ A principle of evil would seek some good--which shows that it
is self-contradictory.
God and His Creatures, Book II, p. 105. Rickaby's Tr.
Turning now to the remarkable socialist of ancient Persia--_Mazdak_.
This early prophet of communism appeared during the reign of
Anūs̱ẖīrwān the Just (531–578 A.D.), and marked another dualistic
reaction against the prevailing Zarwānian doctrine[18:1]. Mazdak, like
Mānī, taught that the diversity of things springs from the mixture of
two independent, eternal principles which he called S̱ẖīd (Light) and
Tār (Darkness). But he differs from his predecessor in holding that the
fact of their mixture as well as their final separation, are quite
accidental, and not at all the result of choice. Mazdak's God is endowed
with sensation, and has four principal energies in his eternal
presence--power of discrimination, memory, understanding and bliss.
These four energies have four personal manifestations who, assisted by
four other persons, superintend the course of the Universe. Variety in
things and men is due to the various combinations of the original
principles.
[18:1] The Zarwānian doctrine prevailed in Persia in the 5th
century B.C. (See Z. D. M. G., Vol. LVII, p. 562).
But the most characteristic feature of the Mazdakite teaching is its
communism, which is evidently an inference from the cosmopolitan spirit
of Mānī's Philosophy. All men, said Mazdak, are equal; and the notion of
individual property was introduced by the hostile demons whose object is
to turn God's Universe into a scene of endless misery. It is chiefly
this aspect of Mazdak's teaching that was most shocking to the
Zoroastrian conscience, and finally brought about the destruction of his
enormous following, even though the master was supposed to have
miraculously made the sacred Fire talk, and bear witness to the truth of
his mission.
§ III.
Retrospect.
We have seen some of the aspects of Pre-Islamic Persian thought; though,
owing to our ignorance of the tendencies of Sāssānīde thought, and of
the political, social, and intellectual conditions that determined its
evolution, we have not been able fully to trace the continuity of ideas.
Nations as well as individuals, in their intellectual history, begin
with the objective. Although the moral fervour of Zoroaster gave a
spiritual tone to his theory of the origin of things, yet the net result
of this period of Persian speculation is nothing more than a
materialistic dualism. The principle of Unity as a philosophical ground
of all that exists, is but dimly perceived at this stage of intellectual
evolution in Persia. The controversy among the followers of Zoroaster
indicates that the movement towards a monistic conception of the
Universe had begun; but we have unfortunately no evidence to make a
positive statement concerning the pantheistic tendencies of Pre-Islamic
Persian thought. We know that in the 6{th} century A.D., Diogenes,
Simplicius and other Neo-Platonic thinkers, were driven by the
persecution of Justinian, to take refuge in the court of the tolerant
Anūs̱ẖīrwān. This great monarch, moreover, had several works translated
for him from Sanskrit and Greek, but we have no historical evidence to
show how far these events actually influenced the course of Persian
thought. Let us, therefore, pass on to the advent of Islām in Persia,
which completely shattered the old order of things, and brought to the
thinking mind the new concept of an uncompromising monotheism as well as
the Greek dualism of God and matter, as distinguished from the purely
Persian dualism of God and Devil.
PART II.
Greek Dualism.
CHAP. II.
THE NEO-PLATONIC ARISTOTELIANS OF PERSIA.
With the Arab conquest of Persia, a new era begins in the history of
Persian thought. But the warlike sons of sandy Arabia whose swords
terminated, at Nahāwand, the political independence of this ancient
people, could hardly touch the intellectual freedom of the converted
Zoroastrian.
The political revolution brought about by the Arab conquest marks the
beginning of interaction between the Aryan and the Semitic, and we find
that the Persian, though he lets the surface of his life become largely
semitised, quietly converts Islām to his own Aryan habits of thought. In
the west the sober Hellenic intellect interpreted another Semitic
religion--Christianity; and the results of interpretation in both cases
are strikingly similar. In each case the aim of the interpreting
intellect is to soften the extreme rigidity of an absolute law imposed
on the individual from without; in one word it is an endeavour to
internalise the external. This process of transformation began with the
study of Greek thought which, though combined with other causes,
hindered the growth of native speculation, yet marked a transition from
the purely objective attitude of Pre-Islamic Persian Philosophy to the
subjective attitude of later thinkers. It is, I believe, largely due to
the influence of foreign thought that the old monistic tendency when it
reasserted itself about the end of the 8{th} century, assumed a much
more spiritual aspect; and, in its later development, revivified and
spiritualised the old Iranian dualism of Light and Darkness. The fact,
therefore, that Greek thought roused into fresh life the subtle Persian
intellect, and largely contributed to, and was finally assimilated by
the general course of intellectual evolution in Persia, justifies us in
briefly running over, even though at the risk of repetition, the systems
of the Persian Neo-Platonists who, as such, deserve very little
attention in a history of purely Persian thought.
It must, however, be remembered that Greek wisdom flowed towards the
Moslem east through Ḥarrān and Syria. The Syrians took up the latest
Greek speculation i.e. Neo-Platonism and transmitted to the Moslem what
they believed to be the real philosophy of Aristotle. It is surprising
that Mohammedan Philosophers, Arabs as well as Persians, continued
wrangling over what they believed to be the real teaching of Aristotle
and Plato, and it never occurred to them that for a thorough
comprehension of their Philosophies, the knowledge of Greek language was
absolutely necessary. So great was their ignorance that an epitomised
translation of the Enneads of Plotinus was accepted as "Theology of
Aristotle". It took them centuries to arrive at a clear conception of
the two great masters of Greek thought; and it is doubtful whether they
ever completely understood them. Avicenna is certainly clearer and more
original than Al-Fārābī and Ibn Maskawaih; and the Andelusian Averroes,
though he is nearer to Aristotle than any of his predecessors, is yet
far from a complete grasp of Aristotle's Philosophy. It would, however,
be unjust to accuse them of servile imitation. The history of their
speculation is one continuous attempt to wade through a hopeless mass of
absurdities that careless translators of Greek Philosophy had
introduced. They had largely to rethink the Philosophies of Aristotle
and Plato. Their commentaries constitute, so to speak, an effort at
discovery, not exposition. The very circumstances which left them no
time to think out independent systems of thought, point to a subtle
mind, unfortunately cabined and cribbed by a heap of obstructing
nonsense that patient industry had gradually to eliminate, and thus to
winnow out truth from falsehood. With these preliminary remarks we
proceed to consider Persian students of Greek Philosophy individually.
§ I.
Ibn Maskawaih[26:1] (d. 1030).
Passing over the names of Saraḵẖsī[26:2], Fārābī who was a Turk, and
the Physician Rāzī (d. 932 A.D.) who, true to his Persian habits of
thought, looked upon light as the first creation, and admitted the
eternity of matter, space and time, we come to the illustrious name of
Abu ‘Alī Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Ya‘qūb, commonly known as _Ibn
Maskawaih_--the treasurer of the Buwaihid Sultān ‘Ad̤aduddaula--one of
the most eminent theistic thinkers, physicians, moralists and historians
of Persia. I give below a brief account of his system from his well
known work Al-Fauz al-Aṣg̱ẖar, published in Beirūt.
[26:1] Dr. Boer, in his Philosophy of Islām, gives a full
account of the Philosophy of Al-Fārābī and Avicenna; but his
account of Ibn Maskawaih's Philosophy is restricted to the
Ethical teaching of that Philosopher. I have given here his
metaphysical views which are decidedly more systematic than
those of Al-Fārābī. Instead of repeating Avicenna's
Neo-Platonism I have briefly stated what I believe to be his
original contribution to the thought of his country.
[26:2] Saraḵẖsī died in 899 A.D. He was a disciple of the
Arabian Philosopher Al-Kindī. His works, unfortunately, have not
reached us.
1. _The existence of the ultimate principle._
Here Ibn Maskawaih follows Aristotle, and reproduces his argument based
on the fact of physical motion. All bodies have the inseparable property
of motion which covers all forms of change, and does not proceed from
the nature of bodies themselves. Motion, therefore, demands an external
source or prime mover. The supposition that motion may constitute the
very essence of bodies, is contradicted by experience. Man, for
instance, has the power of free movement; but, on the supposition,
different parts of his body must continue to move even after they are
severed from one another. The series of moving causes, therefore, must
stop at a cause which, itself immovable, moves everything else. The
immobility of the Primal cause is essential; for the supposition of
motion in the Primal cause would necessitate infinite regress, which is
absurd.
The immovable mover is one. A multiplicity of original movers must imply
something common in their nature, so that they might be brought under
the same category. It must also imply some point of difference in order
to distinguish them from each other. But this partial identity and
difference necessitate composition in their respective essences; and
composition, being a form of motion, cannot, as we have shown, exist in
the first cause of motion. The prime mover again is eternal and
immaterial. Since transition from non-existence to existence is a form
of motion; and since matter is always subject to some kind of motion, it
follows that a thing which is not eternal, or is, in any way, associated
with matter, must be in motion.
2. _The Knowledge of the Ultimate._
All human knowledge begins from sensations which are gradually
transformed into perceptions. The earlier stages of intellection are
completely conditioned by the presence of external reality. But the
progress of knowledge means to be able to think without being
conditioned by matter. Thought begins with matter, but its object is to
gradually free itself from the primary condition of its own
possibility. A higher stage, therefore, is reached in imagination--the
power to reproduce and retain in the mind the copy or image of a thing
without reference to the external objectivity of the thing itself. In
the formation of concepts thought reaches a still higher stage in point
of freedom from materiality; though the concept, in so far as it is the
result of comparison and assimilation of percepts, cannot be regarded as
having completely freed itself from the gross cause of sensations. But
the fact that conception is based on perception, should not lead us to
ignore the great difference between the nature of the concept and the
percept. The individual (percept) is undergoing constant change which
affects the character of the knowledge founded on mere perception. The
knowledge of individuals, therefore, lacks the element of permanence.
The universal (concept), on the other hand, is not affected by the law
of change. Individuals change; the universal remains intact. It is the
essence of matter to submit to the law of change: the freer a thing is
from matter, the less liable it is to change. God, therefore, being
absolutely free from matter, is absolutely changeless; and it is His
complete freedom from materiality that makes our conception of Him
difficult or impossible. The object of all philosophical training is to
develop the power of "ideation" or contemplation on pure concepts, in
order that constant practice might make possible the conception of the
absolutely immaterial.
3. _How the one creates the many._
In this connection it is necessary, for the sake of clearness, to divide
Ibn Maskawaih's investigations into two parts:--
(a) _That the ultimate agent or cause created the Universe out of
nothing._ Materialists, he says, hold the eternity of matter, and
attribute form to the creative activity of God. It is, however, admitted
that when matter passes from one form into another form, the previous
form becomes absolutely non-existent. For if it does not become
absolutely non-existent, it must either pass off into some other body,
or continue to exist in the same body. The first alternative is
contradicted by every day experience. If we transform a ball of wax
into a solid square, the original rotundity of the ball does not pass
off into some other body. The second alternative is also impossible; for
it would necessitate the conclusion that two contradictory forms e.g.
circularity and length, can exist in the same body. It, therefore,
follows that the original form passes into absolute non-existence, when
the new form comes into being. This argument proves conclusively that
attributes i.e., form, color, etc., come into being from pure nothing.
In order to understand that the substance is also non-eternal like the
attribute, we should grasp the truth of the following propositions:--
1. The analysis of matter results in a number of different elements, the
diversity of which is reduced to one simple element.
2. Form and matter are inseparable: no change in matter can annihilate
form.
From these two propositions, Ibn Maskawaih concludes that the substance
had a beginning in time. Matter like form must have begun to exist;
since the eternity of matter necessitates the eternity of form which,
as we have seen, cannot be regarded as eternal.
(b) _The process of creation._ What is the cause of this immense
diversity which meets us on all sides? How could the many be created by
one? When, says the Philosopher, one cause produces a number of
different effects, their multiplicity may depend on any of the following
reasons:--
1. The cause may have various powers. Man, for instance, being a
combination of various elements and powers, may be the cause of various
actions.
2. The cause may use various means to produce a variety of effects.
3. The cause may work upon a variety of material.
None of these propositions can be true of the nature of the ultimate
cause--God. That he possesses various powers, distinct from one another,
is manifestly absurd; since his nature does not admit of composition. If
he is supposed to have employed different means to produce diversity,
who is the creator of these means? If these means are due to the
creative agency of some cause other than the ultimate cause, there
would be a plurality of ultimate causes. If, on the other hand, the
Ultimate Cause himself created these means, he must have required other
means to create these means. The third proposition is also inadmissible
as a conception of the creative act. The many cannot flow from the
causal action of one agent. It, therefore, follows that we have only one
way out of the difficulty--that the ultimate cause created only one
thing which led to the creation of another. Ibn Maskawaih here
enumerates the usual Neo-Platonic emanations gradually growing grosser
and grosser until we reach the primordial elements, which combine and
recombine to evolve higher and higher forms of life. S̱ẖiblī thus sums
up Ibn Maskawaih's theory of evolution[33:1]:--
"The combination of primary substances produced the mineral kingdom, the
lowest form of life. A higher stage of evolution is reached in the
vegetable kingdom. The first to appear is spontaneous grass; then plants
and various kinds of trees, some of which touch the border-land of
animal kingdom, in so far as they manifest certain animal
characteristics. Intermediary between the vegetable kingdom and the
animal kingdom there is a certain form of life which is neither animal
nor vegetable, but shares the characteristics of both (e.g. coral). The
first step beyond this intermediary stage of life, is the development of
the power of movement, and the sense of touch in tiny worms which crawl
upon the earth. The sense of touch, owing to the process of
differentiation, develops other forms of sense, until we reach the plane
of higher animals in which intelligence begins to manifest itself in an
ascending scale. Humanity is touched in the ape which undergoes further
development, and gradually develops erect stature and power of
understanding similar to man. Here animality ends and humanity begins".
[33:1] Maulānā S̱ẖiblī ‘Ilm al-Kalām, p. 141. (Haidarābād).
4. _The soul._
In order to understand whether the soul has an independent existence, we
should examine the nature of human knowledge. It is the essential
property of matter that it cannot assume two different forms
simultaneously. To transform a silver spoon into a silver glass, it is
necessary that the spoon-form as such, should cease to exist. This
property is common to all bodies, and a body that lacks it cannot be
regarded as a body. Now when we examine the nature of perception, we see
that there is a principle in man which, in so far as it is able to know
more than one thing at a time, can assume, so to say, many different
forms simultaneously. This principle cannot be matter, since it lacks
the fundamental property of matter. The essence of the soul consists in
the power of perceiving a number of objects at one and the same moment
of time. But it may be objected that the soul-principle may be either
material in its essence, or a function of matter. There are, however,
reasons to show that the soul cannot be a function of matter.
(a). A thing which assumes different forms and states, cannot itself be
one of those forms and states. A body which receives different colors
should be, in its own nature, colorless. The soul, in its perception of
external objects, assumes, as it were, various forms and states; it,
therefore, cannot be regarded as one of those forms. Ibn Maskawaih
seems to give no countenance to the contemporary Faculty-Psychology; to
him different mental states are various transformations of the soul
itself.
(b). The attributes are constantly changing; there must be beyond the
sphere of change, some permanent substratum which is the foundation of
personal identity.
Having shown that the soul cannot be regarded as a function of matter,
Ibn Maskawaih proceeds to prove that it is essentially immaterial. Some
of his arguments may be noticed:--
1. The senses, after they have perceived a strong stimulus, cannot, for
a certain amount of time, perceive a weaker stimulus. It is, however,
quite different with the mental act of cognition.
2. When we reflect on an abstruse subject, we endeavour to completely
shut our eyes to the objects around us, which we regard as so many
hindrances in the way of spiritual activity. If the soul is material in
its essence, it need not, in order to secure unimpeded activity, escape
from the world of matter.
3. The perception of a strong stimulus weakens and sometimes injures the
sense. The intellect, on the other hand, grows in strength with the
knowledge of ideas and general notions.
4. Physical weakness due to old age, does not affect mental vigour.
5. The soul can conceive certain propositions which have no connection
with the sense-data. The senses, for instance, cannot perceive that two
contradictories cannot exist together.
6. There is a certain power in us which rules over physical organs,
corrects sense-errors, and unifies all knowledge. This unifying
principle which reflects over the material brought before it through the
sense-channel, and, weighing the evidence of each sense, decides the
character of rival statements, must itself stand above the sphere of
matter.
The combined force of these considerations, says Ibn Maskawaih,
conclusively establishes the truth of the proposition--that the soul is
essentially immaterial. The immateriality of the soul signifies its
immortality; since mortality is a characteristic of the material.
§ II.
Avicenna (d. 1037).
Among the early Persian Philosophers, Avicenna alone attempted to
construct his own system of thought. His work, called "Eastern
Philosophy" is still extant; and there has also come down to us a
fragment[38:1] in which the Philosopher has expressed his views on the
universal operation of the force of love in nature. It is something like
the contour of a system, and it is quite probable that ideas expressed
therein were afterwards fully worked out.
[38:1] This fragment on love is preserved in the collected works
of Avicenna in the British Museum Library and has been edited by
N. A. F. Mehren. (Leiden, 1894.)
Avicenna defines "Love" as the appreciation of Beauty; and from the
standpoint of this definition he explains that there are three
categories of being:--
1. Things that are at the highest point of perfection.
2. Things that are at the lowest point of perfection.
3. Things that stand between the two poles of perfection. But the third
category has no real existence; since there are things that have already
attained the acme of perfection, and there are others still progressing
towards perfection. This striving for the ideal is love's movement
towards beauty which, according to Avicenna, is identical with
perfection. Beneath the visible evolution of forms is the force of love
which actualises all striving, movement, progress. Things are so
constituted that they hate non-existence, and love the joy of
individuality in various forms. The indeterminate matter, dead in
itself, assumes, or more properly, is made to assume by the inner force
of love, various forms, and rises higher and higher in the scale of
beauty. The operation of this ultimate force, in the physical plane, can
be thus indicated:--
1. Inanimate objects are combinations of form, matter and quality. Owing
to the working of this mysterious power, quality sticks to its subject
or substance; and form embraces indeterminate matter which, impelled by
the mighty force of love, rises from form to form.
2. The tendency of the force of love is to centralise itself. In the
vegetable kingdom it attains a higher degree of unity or centralisation;
though the soul still lacks that unity of action which it attains
afterwards. The processes of the vegetative soul are:--
(a) Assimilation.
(b) Growth.
(c) Reproduction.
These processes, however, are nothing more than so many manifestations
of love. Assimilation indicates attraction and transformation of what is
external into what is internal. Growth is love of achieving more and
more harmony of parts; and reproduction means perpetuation of the kind,
which is only another phase of love.
3. In the animal kingdom, the various operations of the force of love
are still more unified. It does preserve the vegetable instinct of
acting in different directions; but there is also the development of
temperament which is a step towards more unified activity. In man this
tendency towards unification manifests itself in self-consciousness. The
same force of "natural or constitutional love", is working in the life
of beings higher than man. All things are moving towards the first
Beloved--the Eternal Beauty. The worth of a thing is decided by its
nearness to or distance from, this ultimate principle.
As a physician, however, Avicenna is especially interested in the nature
of the Soul. In his times, moreover, the doctrine of metempsychosis was
getting more and more popular. He, therefore, discusses the nature of
the soul, with a view to show the falsity of this doctrine. It is
difficult, he says, to define the soul; since it manifests different
powers and tendencies in different planes of being. His view of the
various powers of the soul can be thus represented:--
1. Manifestation as unconscious activity--
(a). Working in different directions ┌ 1. Assimilation.
(Vegetative soul) │ 2. Growth.
└ 3. Reproduction.
(b). Working in one direction and securing uniformity of action--growth
of temperament.
2. Manifestation as conscious activity--
(a). As directed to more than one object--
Animal soul.
│
┌────────────┴────────────────────┐
│ │
Lower Animals. Man.
A. Perceptive powers. A. Perceptive powers.
B. Motive powers (desire (a) Five external senses.
of pleasure and avoidance (b) Five internal senses--
of pain). 1. Sensorium.
2. Retention of images.
3. Conception.
4. Imagination.
5. Memory.
These constitute the five internal
senses of the soul which, in man,
manifests itself as progressive
reason, developing from human to
angelic and prophetic reason.
B. Motive powers--will.
(b). As directed to one object--The soul of the spheres which continue
in one uniform motion.
In his fragment on "Nafs" (soul) Avicenna endeavours to show that a
material accompaniment is not necessary to the soul. It is not through
the instrumentality of the body, or some power of the body, that the
soul conceives or imagines; since if the soul necessarily requires a
physical medium in conceiving other things, it must require a different
body in order to conceive the body attached to itself. Moreover, the
fact that the soul is immediately self conscious--conscious of itself
through itself--conclusively shows that in its essence the soul is quite
independent of any physical accompaniment. The doctrine of
metempsychosis implies, also, individual pre-existence. But supposing
that the soul did exist before the body, it must have existed either as
one or as many. The multiplicity of bodies is due to the multiplicity of
material forms, and does not indicate the multiplicity of souls. On the
other hand, if it existed as one, the ignorance or knowledge of A must
mean the ignorance or knowledge of B; since the soul is one in both.
These categories, therefore, cannot be applied to the soul. The truth
is, says Avicenna, that body and soul are contiguous to each other, but
quite opposite in their respective essences. The disintegration of the
body does not necessitate the annihilation of the soul. Dissolution or
decay is a property of compounds, and not of simple, indivisible, ideal
substances. Avicenna, then denies pre-existence, and endeavours to show
the possibility of disembodied conscious life beyond the grave.
We have run over the work of the early Persian Neo-Platonists among
whom, as we have seen, Avicenna alone learned to think for himself. Of
the generations of his disciples--Behmenyār, Ab u’l-Ma’mūm of Isfahān,
Ma‘ṣūmī, Ab u’l-‘Abbās, Ibn Tāhir[44:1]--who carried on their master's
Philosophy, we need not speak. So powerful was the spell of Avicenna's
personality that, even long after it had been removed, any amplification
or modification of his views was considered to be an unpardonable crime.
The old Iranian idea of the dualism of Light and Darkness, does not act
as a determining factor in the progress of Neo-Platonic ideas in Persia,
which borrowed independent life for a time, and eventually merged their
separate existence in the general current of Persian speculation. They
are, therefore, connected with the course of indigenous thought only in
so far as they contributed to the strength and expansion of that
monistic tendency, which manifested itself early in the Church of
Zoroaster; and, though for a time hindered by the Theological
controversies of Islām, burst out with redoubled force in later times,
to extend its titanic grasp to all the previous intellectual
achievements of the land of its birth.
[44:1] Al-Baihaqi; fol. 28a et seqq.
CHAP. III.
THE RISE AND FALL OF RATIONALISM IN ISLĀM.
§ I.
The Metaphysics of Rationalism--Materialism.
The Persian mind, having adjusted itself to the new political
environment, soon reasserts its innate freedom, and begins to retire
from the field of objectivity, in order that it may come back to itself,
and reflect upon the material achieved in its journey out of its own
inwardness. With the study of Greek thought, the spirit which was almost
lost in the concrete, begins to reflect and realise itself as the
arbiter of truth. Subjectivity asserts itself, and endeavours to
supplant all outward authority. Such a period, in the intellectual
history of a people, must be the epoch of rationalism, scepticism,
mysticism, heresy--forms in which the human mind, swayed by the growing
force of subjectivity, rejects all external standards of truth. And so
we find the epoch under consideration.
The period of Umayyad dominance is taken up with the process of
co-mingling and adjustment to new conditions of life; but with the rise
of the ‘Abbāsid Dynasty and the study of Greek Philosophy, the pent-up
intellectual force of Persia bursts out again, and exhibits wonderful
activity in all the departments of thought and action. The fresh
intellectual vigour imparted by the assimilation of Greek Philosophy
which was studied with great avidity, led immediately to a critical
examination of Islamic Monotheism. Theology, enlivened by religious
fervour, learned to talk the language of Philosophy earlier than cold
reason began to seek a retired corner, away from the noise of
controversy, in order to construct a consistent theory of things. In the
first half of the 8{th} century we find Wāṣil Ibn ‘Atā--a Persian
disciple of the famous theologian Ḥasan of Baṣra--starting Mu‘tazilaism
(Rationalism)--that most interesting movement which engaged some of the
subtlest minds of Persia, and finally exhausted its force in the keen
metaphysical controversies of Bag̱ẖdād and Baṣra. The famous city of
Baṣra had become, owing to its commercial situation, the playground of
various forces--Greek Philosophy, Scepticism, Christianity, Buddhistic
ideas, Manichaeism[47:1]--which furnished ample spiritual food to the
inquiring mind of the time, and formed the intellectual environment of
Islamic Rationalism. What Spitta calls the Syrian period of Muhammadan
History is not characterised with metaphysical subtleties. With the
advent of the Persian Period, however, Muhammadan students of Greek
Philosophy began properly to reflect on their religion; and the
Mu‘tazila thinkers[47:2], gradually drifted into metaphysics with which
alone we are concerned here. It is not our object to trace the history
of the Mu‘tazila Kalām; for present purposes it will be sufficient if we
briefly reveal the metaphysical implications of the Mu‘tazila view of
Islām. The conception of God, and the theory of matter, therefore, are
the only aspects of Rationalism which we propose to discuss here.
[47:1] During the ‘Abbāsid Period there were many who secretly
held Manichaean opinions. See Fihrist, Leipsig 1871, p. 338; See
also Al-Mu‘tazila, ed. by T. W. Arnold, Leipsig 1902, p. 27,
where the author speaks of a controversy between Abu
’l-Huḏẖail and Ṣālih, the Dualist. See also Macdonald's Muslim
Theology, p. 133.
[47:2] The Mu‘tazilas belonged to various nationalities, and
many of them were Persians either by descent or domicile. Wāṣil
Ibn ‘Atā--the reported founder of the sect--was a Persian
(Browne, Lit. His., Vol I, p. 281). Von Kremer, however, traces
their origin to the theological controversies of the Umayyad
period. Mu‘tazilaism was not an essentially Persian movement;
but it is true, as Prof. Browne observes (Lit. His., Vol. I, p.
283) that S̱ẖi‘ite and Qādarī tenets, indeed, often went
together, and the S̱ẖi‘ite doctrine current in Persia at the
present day is in many respects Mu‘tazilite, while Ḥasan
Al-As̱ẖ‘arī, the great opponent of the Mu‘tazilite, is by the
S̱ẖi‘ites held in horror. It may also be added that some of the
greater representatives of the Mu‘tazila opinion were S̱ẖi‘as
by religion, e.g. Abu ’l-Huḏẖail (Al-Mu‘tazila, ed. by T. W.
Arnold, p. 28). On the other hand many of the followers of
Al-As̱ẖ‘ari were Persians (See extracts from Ibn ‘Asākir ed.
Mehren), so that it does not seem to be quite justifiable to
describe the As̱ẖ‘arite mode of thought as a purely semitic
movement.
His conception of the unity of God at which the Mu‘tazila eventually
arrived by a subtle dialectic is one of the fundamental points in which
he differs from the Orthodox Muhammadan. God's attributes, according to
his view, cannot be said to inhere in him; they form the very essence of
His nature. The Mu‘tazila, therefore, denies the separate reality of
divine attributes, and declares their absolute identity with the
abstract divine Principle. "God", says Abu’l-Huḏẖail, "is knowing,
all-powerful, living; and his knowledge, power and life constitute His
very essence (ḏẖāt)"[49:1]. In order to explain the pure unity of God
Joseph Al-Baṣīr[49:2] lays down the following five principles:--
(1). The necessary supposition of atom and accident.
(2). The necessary supposition of a creator.
(3). The necessary supposition of the conditions (Aḥwāl) of God.
(4). The rejection of those attributes which do not befit God.
(5). The unity of God in spite of the plurality of His attributes.
[49:1] S̱ẖahrastānī: Cureton's ed., p. 34.
[49:2] Dr. Frankl: Ein Mu‘tazilitischer Kalām--Wien 1872, p. 13.
This conception of unity underwent further modifications; until in the
hands of Mu‘ammar and Abu Hās̱ẖim it became a mere abstract possibility
about which nothing could be predicated. We cannot, he says, predicate
knowledge of God[50:1], for His knowledge must be of something in
Himself. The first necessitates the identity of subject and object which
is absurd; the second implicates duality in the nature of God which is
equally impossible. Aḥmad and Faḍl[50:2]--disciples of Nazzām, however,
recognised this duality in holding that the original creators are
two--God--the eternal principle; and the word of God--Jesus Christ--the
contingent principle. But more fully to bring out the element of truth
in the second alternative suggested by Mu‘ammar, was reserved, as we
shall see, for later Ṣūfī thinkers of Persia. It is, therefore, clear
that some of the rationalists almost unconsciously touched the outer
fringe of later pantheism for which, in a sense, they prepared the way,
not only by their definition of God, but also by their common effort to
internalise the rigid externality of an absolute law.
[50:1] S̱ẖahrastānī: Cureton's ed., p. 48. See also
Steiner--Die Mutaziliten, p. 59.
[50:2] Ibn Ḥazm (Cairo, ed. I) Vol. IV, p. 197. See also
S̱ẖahrastānī: Cureton's ed., p. 42.
But the most important contribution of the advocates of Rationalism to
purely metaphysical speculation, is their explanation of matter, which
their opponents--the Ash‘arite--afterwards modified to fit in with their
own views of the nature of God. The interest of Nazzām chiefly consisted
in the exclusion of all arbitrariness from the orderly course of
nature[51:1]. The same interest in naturalism led Al-Jāḥiẓ to define
Will in a purely negative manner[51:2]. Though the Rationalist thinkers
did not want to abandon the idea of a Personal Will, yet they
endeavoured to find a deeper ground for the independence of individual
natural phenomena. And this ground they found in matter itself. Nazzām
taught the infinite divisibility of matter, and obliterated the
distinction between substance and accident[51:3]. Existence was regarded
as a quality superimposed by God on the pre-existing material atoms
which would have been incapable of perception without this quality.
Muḥammad Ibn ‘Uṯẖmān, one of the Mu‘tazila S̱ẖaiḵẖs, says Ibn
Ḥazm,[51:4] maintained that the non-existent (atom in its
pre-existential state) is a body in that state; only that in its
pre-existential condition it is neither in motion, nor at rest, nor is
it said to be created. Substance, then, is a collection of
qualities--taste, odour, colour--which, in themselves, are nothing more
than material potentialities. The soul, too, is a finer kind of matter;
and the processes of knowledge are mere mental motions. Creation is only
the actualisation of pre-existing potentialities[52:1] (Ṭafra). The
individuality of a thing which is defined as "that of which something
can be predicated"[52:2] is not an essential factor in its notion. The
collection of things we call the Universe, is externalised or
perceptible reality which could, so to speak, exist independent of all
perceptibility. The object of these metaphysical subtleties is purely
theological. God, to the Rationalist, is an absolute unity which can, in
no sense, admit of plurality, and could thus exist without the
perceptible plurality--the Universe.
[51:1] Steiner: Die Mu‘taziliten; Leipzig, 1865, p. 57.
[51:2] Steiner: Die Mu‘taziliten; Leipzig, 1865, p. 59.
[51:3] S̱ẖahrastānī: Cureton's ed., p. 38.
[51:4] Ibn Ḥazm (ed. Cairo): Vol. V, p. 42.
[52:1] S̱ẖahrastānī: Cureton's ed, p. 38.
[52:2] Steiner: Die Mu‘taziliten, p. 80.
The activity of God, then, consists only in making the atom perceptible.
The properties of the atom flow from its own nature. A stone thrown up
falls down on account of its own indwelling property[53:1]. God, says
Al-‘Aṭṭār of Baṣra and Bis̱ẖr ibn al Mu‘tamir, did not create colour,
length, breadth, taste or smell--all these are activities of bodies
themselves[53:2]. Even the number of things in the Universe is not known
to God[53:3]. Bishr ibn al-Mu‘tamir further explained the properties of
bodies by what he called "Tawallud"--interaction of bodies[53:4]. Thus
it is clear that the Rationalists were philosophically materialists, and
theologically deists.
[53:1] S̱ẖahrastānī: Cureton's ed., p. 38.
[53:2] Ibn Ḥazm (ed. Cairo): Vol. IV, pp. 194, 197.
[53:3] Ibn Ḥazm (ed. Cairo): Vol. IV, p. 194.
[53:4] S̱ẖahrastānī: Cureton's ed., p. 44.
To them substance and atom are identical, and they define substance as a
space-filling atom which, besides the quality of filling space, has a
certain direction, force and existence forming its very essence as an
actuality. In shape it is squarelike; for if it is supposed to be
circular, combination of different atoms would not be possible[53:5].
There is, however, great difference of opinion among the exponents of
atomism in regard to the nature of the atom. Some hold that atoms are
all similar to each other; while Abu’l-Qāsim of Balḵẖ regards them as
similar as well as dissimilar. When we say that two things are similar
to each other, we do not necessarily mean that they are similar in all
their attributes. Abu’l-Qāsim further differs from Nazzām in advocating
the indestructibility of the atom. He holds that the atom had a
beginning in time; but that it cannot be completely annihilated. The
attribute of "Baqā" (continued existence), he says, does not give to its
subject a new attribute other than existence; and the continuity of
existence is not an additional attribute at all. The divine activity
created the atom as well as its continued existence. Abu’l-Qāsim,
however, admits that some atoms may not have been created for continued
existence. He denies also the existence of any intervening space between
different atoms, and holds, unlike other representatives of the school,
that the essence or atom (Māhiyyat) could not remain essence in a state
of non-existence. To advocate the opposite is a contradiction in terms.
To say that the essence (which is essence because of the attribute of
existence) could remain essence in a state of non-existence, is to say
that the existent could remain existent in a state of non-existence. It
is obvious that Abu’l-Qāsim here approaches the As̱ẖ‘arite theory of
knowledge which dealt a serious blow to the Rationalist theory of
matter.
[53:5] In my treatment of the atomism of Islamic Rationalists, I
am indebted to Arthur Biram's publication: "Kitābul Masā’il fil
ḵẖilāf beyn al-Baṣriyyīn wal Bag̱ẖdādiyyīn".
§ II.
Contemporary Movements of Thought.
Side by side with the development of Mu‘tazilaism we see, as is natural
in a period of great intellectual activity, many other tendencies of
thought manifesting themselves in the philosophical and religious
circles of Islam. Let us notice them briefly:--
1. Scepticism. The tendency towards scepticism was the natural
consequence of the purely dialectic method of Rationalism. Men such as
Ibn As̱ẖras and Al-Jāhiz who apparently belonged to the Rationalist
camp, were really sceptics. The standpoint of Al-Jāhiz who inclined to
deistic naturalism[55:1], is that of a cultured man of the time, and
not of a professional theologian. In him is noticeable also a reaction
against the metaphysical hairsplitting of his predecessors, and a desire
to widen the pale of theology for the sake of the illiterate who are
incapable of reflecting on articles of faith.
[55:1] Macdonald's Muslim Theology, p. 161.
2. Ṣūfīism--an appeal to a higher source of knowledge which was first
systematised by Ḏẖu’l-Nūn, and became more and more deepened and
antischolastic in contrast to the dry intellectualism of the
As̱ẖ‘arite. We shall consider this interesting movement in the
following chapter.
3. The revival of authority--Ismā‘īlianism--a movement
characteristically Persian which, instead of repudiating freethought,
endeavours to come to an understanding with it. Though this movement
seems to have no connection with the theological controversies of the
time, yet its connection with freethought is fundamental. The similarity
between the methods practised by the Ismā‘īlian missionaries and those
of the partisans of the association called Iḵẖwān al-Safā--Brethren of
Purity--suggests some sort of secret relation between the two
institutions. Whatever may be the motive of those who started this
movement, its significance as an intellectual phenomenon should not be
lost sight of. The multiplicity of philosophical and religious views--a
necessary consequence of speculative activity--is apt to invoke forces
which operate against this, religiously speaking, dangerous
multiplicity. In the 18th century history of European thought we see
Fichte, starting with a sceptical inquiry concerning the nature of
matter, and finding its last word in Pantheism. Schleiermacher appeals
to Faith as opposed to Reason, Jacobi points to a source of knowledge
higher than reason, while Comte abandons all metaphysical inquiry, and
limits all knowledge to sensuous perception. De Maistre and Schlegel, on
the other hand, find a resting place in the authority of an absolutely
infallible Pope. The advocates of the doctrine of Imāmat think in the
same strain as De Maistre; but it is curious that the Ismā‘īlians, while
making this doctrine the basis of their Church, permitted free play to
all sorts of thinking.
The Ismā‘īlia movement then is one aspect of the persistent
battle[57:1] which the intellectually independent Persian waged against
the religious and political ideals of Islam. Originally a branch of the
Shī‘ite religion, the Ismā‘īlia sect assumed quite a cosmopolitan
character with ‘Abdulla ibn Maimūn--the probable progenitor of the
Fātimid Caliphs of Egypt--who died about the same time when
Al-As̱ẖ‘arī, the great opponent of Freethought, was born. This curious
man imagined a vast scheme in which he weaved together innumerable
threads of various hues, resulting in a cleverly constructed
equivocation, charming to the Persian mind for its mysterious character
and misty Pythagorean Philosophy. Like the Association of the Brethren
of Purity, he made an attempt, under the pious cloak of the doctrine of
Imāmat (Authority), to synthesise all the dominating ideas of the time.
Greek Philosophy, Christianity, Rationalism, Sūfīism, Manichaeism,
Persian heresies, and above all the idea of reincarnation, all came
forward to contribute their respective shares to the boldly conceived
Ismā‘īlian whole, the various aspects of which were to be gradually
revealed to the initiated, by the "Leader"--the ever Incarnating
Universal Reason--according to the intellectual development of the age
in which he incarnated himself. In the Ismā‘īlian movement, Freethought,
apprehending the collapse of its ever widening structure, seeks to rest
upon a stable basis, and, by a strange irony of fate, is led to find it
in the very idea which is revolting to its whole being. Barren
authority, though still apt to reassert herself at times, adopts this
unclaimed child, and thus permits herself to assimilate all knowledge
past, present and future.
[57:1] Ibn Ḥazm in his Kitāb al-Milal, looks upon the heretical
sects of Persia as a continuous struggle against the Arab power
which the cunning Persian attempted to shake off by these
peaceful means. See Von Kremer's Geschichte der herrschenden
Ideen des Islams, pp. 10, 11, where this learned Arab historian
of Cordova is quoted at length.
The unfortunate connection, however, of this movement with the politics
of the time, has misled many a scholar. They see in it (Macdonald, for
instance) nothing more than a powerful conspiracy to uproot the
political power of the Arab from Persia. They have denounced the
Ismā‘īlian Church which counted among its followers some of the best
heads and sincerest hearts, as a mere clique of dark murderers who were
ever watching for a possible victim. We must always remember, while
estimating the character of these people, the most barbarous
persecutions which drove them to pay red-handed fanaticism in the same
coin. Assassinations for religious purposes were considered
unobjectionable, and even perhaps lawful, among the whole Semite race.
As late as the latter half of the 16th century, the Pope of Rome could
approve such a dreadful slaughter as the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
That assassination, even though actuated by religious zeal, is still a
crime, is a purely modern idea; and justice demands that we should not
judge older generations with our own standards of right and wrong. A
great religious movement which shook to its very foundations the
structure of a vast empire, and, having successfully passed through the
varied ordeals of moral reproach, calumny and persecution, stood up for
centuries as a champion of Science and Philosophy, could not have
entirely rested on the frail basis of a political conspiracy of a mere
local and temporary character. Ismā‘īlianism, in spite of its almost
entire loss of original vitality, still dominates the ethical ideal of
not an insignificant number in India, Persia, Central Asia, Syria and
Africa; while the last expression of Persian thought--Bābism--is
essentially Ismā‘īlian in its character.
To return, however, to the Philosophy of the sect. From the later
Rationalists they borrowed their conception of Divinity. God, or the
ultimate principle of existence, they teach, has no attribute. His
nature admits of no predication. When we predicate the attribute of
power to him, we only mean that He is the giver of power; when we
predicate eternity, we indicate the eternity of what the Qur’ān calls
"Amr" (word of God) as distinguished from the "Ḵẖalq" (creation of
God) which is contingent. In His nature all contradictions melt away,
and from Him flow all opposites. Thus they considered themselves to have
solved the problem which had troubled the mind of Zoroaster and his
followers.
In order to find an answer to the question, "What is plurality?" the
Ismā‘īlia refer to what they consider a metaphysical axiom--"that from
one only one can proceed". But the one which proceeds, is not something
completely different from which it proceeds. It is really the Primal one
transformed. The Primal Unity, therefore, transformed itself into the
First Intellect (Universal Reason); and then, by means of this
transformation of itself, created the Universal soul which, impelled by
its nature to perfectly identify itself with the original source, felt
the necessity of motion, and consequently of a body possessing the power
of motion. In order to achieve its end, the soul created the heavens
moving in circular motion according to its direction. It also created
the elements which mixed together, and formed the visible Universe--the
scene of plurality through which it endeavours to pass with a view to
come back to the original source. The individual soul is an epitome of
the whole Universe which exists only for its progressive education. The
Universal Reason incarnates itself from time to time, in the personality
of the "Leader" who illuminates the soul in proportion to its experience
and understanding, and gradually guides it through the scene of
plurality to the world of eternal unity. When the Universal soul
reaches its goal, or rather returns to its own deep being, the process
of disintegration ensues. "Particles constituting the Universe fall off
from each other--those of goodness go to truth (God) which symbolises
unity; those of evil go to untruth (Devil) which symbolises
diversity"[63:1]. This is but briefly the Ismā‘īlian Philosophy--a
mixture, as S̱ẖarastānī remarks, of Philosophical and Manichaean
ideas--which, by gradually arousing the slumbering spirit of scepticism,
they administered, as it were, in doses to the initiated, and finally
brought them to that stage of spiritual emancipation where solemn ritual
drops off, and dogmatic religion appears to be nothing more than a
systematic arrangement of useful falsehoods.
[63:1] S̱ẖarastānī: Cureton's ed: p. 149.
The Ismā‘īlian doctrine is the first attempt to amalgamate contemporary
Philosophy with a really Persian view of the Universe, and to restate
Islam, in reference to this synthesis, by allegorical interpretation of
the Qur’ān--a method which was afterwards adopted by Ṣūfīism. With them
the Zoroastrian Ahriman (Devil) is not the malignant creator of evil
things but it is a principle which violates the eternal unity, and
breaks it up into visible diversity. The idea that some principle of
difference in the nature of the ultimate existence must be postulated in
order to account for empirical diversity, underwent further
modifications; until in the Ḥurūfī sect (an offshoot of the Ismā‘īlia),
in the fourteenth century, it touched contemporary Ṣūfīism on the one
hand, and Christian Trinity on the other. The "Be", maintained the
Ḥurūfīs, is the eternal word of God, which, itself uncreated, leads to
further creation--the word externalised. "But for the 'word' the
recognition of the essence of Divinity would have been impossible; since
Divinity is beyond the reach of sense--perception"[64:1]. The 'word',
therefore, became flesh in the womb of Mary[64:2] in order to manifest
the Father. The whole Universe is the manifestation of God's 'word', in
which He is immanent[64:3]. Every sound in the Universe is within God;
every atom is singing the song of eternity[64:4]; all is life. Those
who want to discover the ultimate reality of things, let them seek "the
named" through the Name[65:1], which at once conceals and reveals its
subject.
[64:1] Jāwidān Kabīr, fol. 149a.
[64:2] Jāwidān Kabīr, fol. 280a.
[64:3] Jāwidān Kabīr, fol. 366b.
[64:4] Jāwidān Kabīr, fol. 155b.
[65:1] Jāwidān Kabīr, fol. 382a.
§ III.
Reaction against Rationalism.
The As̱ẖ‘arite.
Patronised by the early Caliphs of the House of ‘Abbās, Rationalism
continued to flourish in the intellectual centres of the Islamic world;
until, in the first half of the 9th century, it met the powerful
orthodox reaction which found a very energetic leader in Al-As̱ẖ‘arī
(b, 873 A.D.) who studied under Rationalist teachers only to demolish,
by their own methods, the edifice they had so laboriously built. He was
a pupil of Al-Jubbā’ī[65:2]--the representative of the younger school of
Mu‘tazilaism in Baṣra--with whom he had many controversies[65:3] which
eventually terminated their friendly relations, and led the pupil to bid
farewell to the Mu‘tazila camp. "The fact", says Spitta, "that
Al-As̱ẖ‘arī was so thoroughly a child of his time with the successive
currents of which he let himself go, makes him, in another relation, an
important figure to us. In him, as in any other, are clearly reflected
the various tendencies of this politically as well as religiously
interesting period; and we seldom find ourselves in a position to weigh
the power of the orthodox confession and the Mu‘tazilite speculation,
the child-like helpless manner of the one, the immaturity and
imperfection of the other, so completely as in the life of this man who
was orthodox as a boy and a Mu‘tazila as a young man"[66:1]. The
Mu‘tazila speculation (e.g. Al-Jāḥiz) tended to be absolutely
unfettered, and in some cases led to a merely negative attitude of
thought. The movement initiated by Al-As̱ẖ‘arī was an attempt not only
to purge Islām of all non-Islamic elements which had quietly crept into
it, but also to harmonize the religious consciousness with the
religious thought of Islam. Rationalism was an attempt to measure
reality by reason alone; it implied the identity of the spheres of
religion and philosophy, and strove to express faith in the form of
concepts or terms of pure thought. It ignored the facts of human nature,
and tended to disintegrate the solidarity of the Islamic Church. Hence
the reaction.
[65:2] Extracts from Ibn ‘Asākir (Mehren)--Travaux de la
troisième session du Congrès International des Orientalistes--p.
261.
[65:3] Spitta: Zur Geschichte Abul-Ḥasan Al-As̱ẖ‘arī, pp. 42,
43. See also Ibn Ḵẖallikān (Gottingen 1839)--Al-Jubbā’ī, where
the story of their controversy is given.
[66:1] Spitta: Vorwort, p. VII.
The orthodox reaction led by the As̱ẖ‘arite then was, in reality,
nothing more than the transfer of dialectic method to the defence of the
authority of Divine Revelation. In opposition to the Rationalists, they
maintained the doctrine of the Attributes of God; and, as regards the
Free Will controversy, they adopted a course lying midway between the
extreme fatalism of the old school, and the extreme libertarianism of
the Rationalists. They teach that the power of choice as well as all
human actions are created by God; and that man has been given the power
of acquiring[67:1] the different modes of activity. But Faḵẖral-Dīn
Rāzī, who in his violent attack on philosophy was strenuously opposed by
Tūsī and Qutbal-Dīn, does away with the idea of "acquisition", and
openly maintains the doctrine of necessity in his commentary on the
Qur’ān. The Mātarīdiyya--another school of anti-rationalist theology,
founded by Abu Manṣūr Mātarīdī a native of Mātarīd in the environs of
Samarqand--went back to the old rationalist position, and taught in
opposition to the As̱ẖ‘arite, that man has absolute control over his
activity; and that his power affects the very nature of his actions.
Al-As̱ẖ‘arī's interest was purely theological; but it was impossible to
harmonise reason and revelation without making reference to the ultimate
nature of reality. Bāqilānī[68:1] therefore, made use of some purely
metaphysical propositions (that substance is an individual unity; that
quality cannot exist in quality; that perfect vacuum is possible.) in
his Theological investigation, and thus gave the school a metaphysical
foundation which it is our main object to bring out. We shall not,
therefore, dwell upon their defence of orthodox beliefs (e.g. that the
Qur’ān is uncreated; that the visibility of God is possible etc.); but
we shall endeavour to pick up the elements of metaphysical thought in
their theological controversies. In order to meet contemporary
philosophers on their own ground, they could not dispense with
philosophising; hence willingly or unwillingly they had to develop a
theory of knowledge peculiar to themselves.
[67:1] S̱ẖahrastānī--ed. Cureton, p. 69.
[68:1] Martin Schreiner: Zur Geschichte des Ash‘aritenthums.
(Huitième Congrès International des Orientalistes 1889, p. 82).
God, according to the As̱ẖ‘arite, is the ultimate necessary existence
which "carries its attributes in its own being"[69:1]; and whose
existence (wujūd) and essence (Māhiyyat) are identical. Besides the
argument from the contingent character of motion they used the following
arguments to prove the existence of this ultimate principle:--
(1). All bodies, they argue, are one in so far as the phenomenal fact of
their existence is concerned. But in spite of this unity, their
qualities are different and even opposed to each other. We are,
therefore, driven to postulate an ultimate cause in order to account for
their empirical divergence.
[69:1] Martin Schreiner: Zur Geschichte des Ash‘aritenthums.
(Huitième Congrès International des Orientalistes II{me} Partie
1893, p. 113).
(2). Every contingent being needs a cause to account for its existence.
The Universe is contingent; therefore it must have a cause; and that
cause is God. That the Universe is contingent, they proved in the
following manner. All that exists in the Universe, is either substance
or quality. The contingence of quality is evident, and the contingence
of substance follows from the fact that no substance could exist apart
from qualities. The contingence of quality necessitates the contingence
of substance; otherwise the eternity of substance would necessitate the
eternity of quality. In order fully to appreciate the value of this
argument, it is necessary to understand the As̱ẖ‘arite theory of
knowledge. To answer the question, "What is a thing?" they subjected to
a searching criticism the Aristotelian categories of thought, and
arrived at the conclusion that bodies have no properties in
themselves[70:1]. They made no distinction of secondary and primary
qualities of a body, and reduced all of them to purely subjective
relations. Quality too became with them a mere accident without which
the substance could not exist. They used the word substance or atom with
a vague implication of externality; but their criticism, actuated by a
pious desire to defend the idea of divine creation, reduced the Universe
to a mere show of ordered subjectivities which, as they maintained like
Berkeley, found their ultimate explanation in the Will of God. In his
examination of human knowledge regarded as a product and not merely a
process, Kant stopped at the idea of "Ding an sich", but the As̱ẖ‘arite
endeavoured to penetrate further, and maintained, against the
contemporary Agnostic-Realism, that the so called underlying essence
existed only in so far as it was brought in relation to the knowing
subject. Their atomism, therefore, approaches that of Lotze[71:1] who,
in spite of his desire to save external reality, ended in its complete
reduction to ideality. But like Lotze they could not believe their atoms
to be the inner working of the Infinite Primal Being. The interest of
pure monotheism was too strong for them. The necessary consequence of
their analysis of matter is a thorough going idealism like that of
Berkeley; but perhaps their instinctive realism combined with the force
of atomistic tradition, still compels them to use the word "atom" by
which they endeavour to give something like a realistic coloring to
their idealism. The interest of dogmatic theology drove them to maintain
towards pure Philosophy an attitude of criticism which taught her
unwilling advocates how to philosophise and build a metaphysics of their
own.
[70:1] See Macdonald's admirable account of the As̱ẖ‘arite
Metaphysics: Muslim Theology p. 201 sq. See also Maulānā
S̱ẖiblī ‘Ilmal Kalām pp. 60, 72.
[71:1] "Lotze is an atomist, but he does not conceive the atoms
themselves as material; for extension, like all other sensuous
qualities is explained through the reciprocal action of atoms;
they themselves, therefore, cannot possess this quality. Like
life and like all empirical qualities, the sensuous fact of
extension is due to the cooperation of points of force, which,
in time, must be conceived as starting points of the inner
workings of the Infinite Primal Being." Höffding Vol. II, p.
516.
But a more important and philosophically more significant aspect of the
As̱ẖ‘arite Metaphysics, is their attitude towards the Law of
Causation[72:1]. Just as they repudiated all the principles of
optics[72:2] in order to show, in opposition to the Rationalists, that
God could be visible in spite of His being unextended, so with a view
to defend the possibility of miracles, they rejected the idea of
causation altogether. The orthodox believed in miracles as well as in
the Universal Law of Causation; but they maintained that, at the time of
manifesting a miracle, God suspended the operation of this law. The
As̱ẖ‘arite, however, starting with the supposition that cause and
effect must be similar, could not share the orthodox view, and taught
that the idea of power is meaningless, and that we know nothing but
floating impressions, the phenomenal order of which is determined by
God.
[72:1] S̱ẖiblī ‘Ilmal-Kalām pp. 64, 72.
[72:2] S̱ẖahrastānī, ed. Cureton, p. 82.
Any account of the As̱ẖ‘arite metaphysics would be incomplete without a
notice of the work of Al-G̱ẖazālī (d. 1111 A.D.) who though
misunderstood by many orthodox theologians, will always be looked upon
as one of the greatest personalities of Islam. This sceptic of powerful
ability anticipated Descartes[73:1] in his philosophical method; and,
"seven hundred years before Hume cut the bond of causality with the
edge of his dialectic"[73:2]. He was the first to write a systematic
refutation of philosophy, and completely to annihilate that dread of
intellectualism which had characterised the orthodox. It was chiefly his
influence that made men study dogma and metaphysics together, and
eventually led to a system of education which produced such men as
S̱ẖahrastānī, Al-Rāzī and Al-Is̱ẖrāqī. The following passage indicates
his attitude as a thinker:--
"From my childhood I was inclined to think out things for myself. The
result of this attitude was that I revolted against authority; and all
the beliefs that had fixed themselves in my mind from childhood lost
their original importance. I thought that such beliefs based on mere
authority were equally entertained by Jews, Christians, and followers of
other religions. Real knowledge must eradicate all doubt. For instance,
it is self-evident that ten is greater than three. If a person, however,
endeavours to prove the contrary by an appeal to his power of turning a
stick into a snake, the performance would indeed be wonderful, though
it cannot touch the certainty of the proposition in question"[75:1]. He
examined afterwards, all the various claimants of "Certain Knowledge"
and finally found it in Ṣūfīism.
[73:1] "It (Al-Ghazālī's work on the Revivication of the
sciences of religion) has so remarkable a resemblance to the
_Discourse sur la methode_ of Descartes, that had any
translation of it existed in the days of Descartes everyone
would have cried against the plagiarism". (Lewes's History of
Philosophy: Vol. II. p. 50).
[73:2] Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 20, p.
103.
[75:1] Al-Munqiḏẖ p. 3.
With their view of the nature of substance, the As̱ẖ‘arite, rigid
monotheists as they were, could not safely discuss the nature of the
human soul. Al-G̱ẖazālī alone seriously took up the problem, and to
this day it is difficult to define, with accuracy, his view of the
nature of God. In him, like Borger and Solger in Germany, Ṣūfī pantheism
and the As̱ẖ‘arite dogma of personality appear to harmonise together, a
reconciliation which makes it difficult to say whether he was a
Pantheist, or a Personal Pantheist of the type of Lotze. The soul,
according to Al-G̱ẖazālī, perceives things. But perception as an
attribute can exist only in a substance or essence which is absolutely
free from all the attributes of body. In his Al-Madnūn[75:2], he
explains why the prophet declined to reveal the nature of the soul.
There are, he says, two kinds of men; ordinary men and thinkers. The
former who look upon materiality as a condition of existence, cannot
conceive an immaterial substance. The latter are led, by their logic, to
a conception of the soul which sweeps away all difference between God
and the individual soul. Al-G̱ẖazālī, therefore, realised the
Pantheistic drift of his own inquiry, and preferred silence as to the
ultimate nature of the soul.
[75:2] See Sir Sayyid Aḥmad's criticism of Al-G̱ẖazālī's view
of the soul, Al-Nazrufī ba’di Masāili-l Imāmi-l humām Abū Ḥāmid
Al-G̱ẖazālī; No. 4, p. 3 sq. (ed. Agra).
He is generally included among the As̱ẖ‘arite. But strictly speaking he
is not an As̱ẖ‘arite; though he admitted that the As̱ẖ‘arite mode of
thought was excellent for the masses. "He held", says S̱ẖiblī
(‘Ilmal-Kalām, p. 66.), "that the secret of faith could not be revealed;
for this reason he encouraged exposition of the As̱ẖ‘arite theology,
and took good care in persuading his immediate disciples not to publish
the results of his private reflection". Such an attitude towards the
As̱ẖ‘arite theology, combined with his constant use of philosophical
language, could not but lead to suspicion. Ibn Jauzī, Qāḍī ‘Iyāḍ, and
other famous theologians of the orthodox school, publicly denounced him
as one of the "misguided"; and ‘Iyāḍ went even so far as to order the
destruction of all his philosophical and theological writings that
existed in Spain.
It is, therefore, clear that while the dialectic of Rationalism
destroyed the personality of God, and reduced divinity to a bare
indefinable universality, the antirationalist movement, though it
preserved the dogma of personality, destroyed the external reality of
nature. In spite of Nazzām's theory of "Atomic objectification"[77:1],
the atom of the Rationalist possesses an independent objective reality;
that of the As̱ẖ‘arite is a fleeting moment of Divine Will. The one
saves nature, and tends to do away with the God of Theology; the other
sacrifices nature to save God as conceived by the orthodox. The
God-intoxicated Ṣūfī who stands aloof from the Theological controversies
of the age, saves and spiritualises both the aspects of existence, and
looks upon the whole Universe as the self-revelation of God--a higher
notion which synthesises the opposite extremes of his predecessors.
"Wooden-legged" Rationalism, as the Ṣūfī called it, speaks its last word
in the sceptic Al-G̱ẖazālī, whose restless soul, after long and
hopeless wanderings in the desolate sands of dry intellectualism, found
its final halting place in the still deep of human emotion. His
scepticism is directed more to substantiate the necessity of a higher
source of knowledge than merely to defend the dogma of Islamic Theology,
and, therefore, marks the quiet victory of Ṣūfīism over all the rival
speculative tendencies of the time.
[77:1] Ibn Ḥazm, Vol. V, p. 63, 64, where the author states and
criticises this theory.
Al-G̱ẖazālī's positive contribution to the Philosophy of his country,
however, is found in his little book--Mis̱ẖkātal-Anwār--where he starts
with the Quranic verse, "God is the light of heavens and earth", and
instinctively returns to the Iranian idea, which was soon to find a
vigorous expounder in Al-Is̱ẖrāqī. Light, he teaches in this book, is
the only real existence; and there is no darkness greater than
non-existence. But the essence of Light is manifestation: "it is
attributed to manifestation which is a relation"[78:1]. The Universe
was created out of darkness on which God sprinkled[79:1] his own light,
and made its different parts more or less visible according as they
received more or less light. As bodies differ from one another in being
dark, obscure, illuminated or illuminating, so men are differentiated
from one another. There are some who illuminate other human beings; and,
for this reason, the Prophet is named "The Burning Lamp" in the Qur’ān.
[78:1] Mis̱ẖkātal-Anwār, fol. 3a.
[79:1] In support of this view Al-G̱ẖazālī quotes a tradition
of the prophet. Mis̱ẖkātal-Anwār, fol. 10a.
The physical eye sees only the external manifestation of the Absolute or
Real Light. There is an internal eye in the heart of man which, unlike
the physical eye, sees itself as other things, an eye which goes beyond
the finite, and pierces the veil of manifestation. These thoughts are
merely germs, which developed and fructified in Al-Is̱ẖrāqī's
"Philosophy of Illumination"--Ḥikmatal-Is̱ẖrāq.
Such is the As̱ẖ‘arite philosophy.
One great theological result of this reaction was that it checked the
growth of freethought which tended to dissolve the solidarity of the
Church. We are, however, concerned more with the purely intellectual
results of the As̱ẖ‘arite mode of thought, and these are mainly two:--
(1). It led to an independent criticism of Greek philosophy as we shall
see presently.
(2). In the beginning of the 10th century when the As̱ẖ‘arite had
almost completely demolished the stronghold of Rationalism, we see a
tendency towards what may be called Persian Positivism. Al-Birūnī[80:1]
(d. 1048) and Ibn Haiṯẖam[80:2] (d. 1038) who anticipated modern
empirical Psychology in recognising what is called reaction-time, gave
up all inquiry concerning the nature of the supersensual, and maintained
a prudent silence about religious matters. Such a state of things could
have existed, but could not have been logically justified before
Al-As̱ẖ‘arī.
[80:1] He (Al-Birūnī) quotes with approval the following, as the
teaching of the adherents of Aryabhatta: It is enough for us to
know that which is lighted up by the sun's rays. Whatever lies
beyond, though it should be of immeasurable extent, we cannot
make use of; for what the sunbeam does not reach, the senses do
not perceive, and what the senses do not perceive we cannot
know. From this we gather what Al-Birūnī's Philosophy was: only
sense-perceptions, knit together by a logical intelligence,
yield sure knowledge. (Boer's Philosophy in Islām, p. 146).
[80:2] "Moreover truth for him (Ibn Haiṯẖam) was only that
which was presented as material for the faculties of
sense-perception, and which received it from the understanding,
being thus the logically elaborated perception". (Boer's
Philosophy in Islām, p. 150).
[80:2] "Moreover truth for him (Ibn Haiṯẖam) was only that
which was presented as material for the faculties of
sense-perception, and which received it from the understanding,
being thus the logically elaborated perception". (Boer's
Philosophy in Islām, p. 150).
CHAP. IV.
CONTROVERSY BETWEEN IDEALISM AND REALISM.
The As̱ẖ‘arite denial of Aristotle's Prima Materia, and their views
concerning the nature of space, time and causation, awakened that
irrepressible spirit of controversy which, for centuries, divided the
camp of Muhammedan thinkers, and eventually exhausted its vigor in the
merely verbal subtleties of schools. The publication of Najm al-Dīn
Al-Kātibī's (a follower of Aristotle whose disciples were called
Philosophers as distinguished from scholastic theologians) Ḥikmat
al-‘Ain--"Philosophy of Essence", greatly intensified the intellectual
conflict, and invoked keen criticism from a host of As̱ẖ‘arite as well
as other idealist thinkers. I shall consider in order the principal
points on which the two schools differed from each other.
A. _The Nature of the Essence._
We have seen that the As̱ẖ‘arite theory of knowledge drove them to
hold that individual essences of various things are quite different from
each other, and are determined in each case by the ultimate cause--God.
They denied the existence of an everchanging primary stuff common to all
things, and maintained against the Rationalists that existence
constitutes the very being of the essence. To them, therefore, essence
and existence are identical. They argued that the Judgment, "Man is
animal", is possible only on the ground of a fundamental difference
between the subject and the predicate; since their identity would make
the Judgment nugatory, and complete difference would make the
predication false. It is, therefore, necessary to postulate an external
cause to determine the various forms of existence. Their opponents,
however, admit the determination or limitation of existence, but they
maintain that all the various forms of existence, in so far as their
essence is concerned, are identical--all being limitations of one
Primary substance. The followers of Aristotle met the difficulty
suggested by the possibility of synthetic predication, by advocating the
possibility of compound essences. Such a judgment as "Man is animal",
they maintained, is true; because man is an essence composed of two
essences, animality and humanity. This, retorted the As̱ẖ‘arite, cannot
stand criticism. If you say that the essence of man and animal is the
same, you in other words hold that the essence of the whole is the same
as that of the part. But this proposition is absurd; since if the
essence of the compound is the same as that of its constituents, the
compound will have to be regarded as one being having two essences or
existences.
It is obvious that the whole controversy turns on the question whether
existence is a mere idea or something objectively real. When we say that
a certain thing exists, do we mean that it exists only in relation to us
(As̱ẖ‘arite position); or that it is an essence existing quite
independently of us (Realist position)? We shall briefly indicate the
arguments of either side. The Realist argued as follows:--
(1). The conception of my existence is something immediate or intuitive.
The thought "I exist" is a "concept", and my body being an element of
this "concept", it follows that my body is intuitively known as
something real. If the knowledge of the existent is not immediate, the
fact of its perception would require a process of thought which, as we
know, it does not. The As̱ẖ‘arite Al-Rāzī admits that the concept of
existence is immediate; but he regards the judgment--"The concept of
existence is immediate"--as merely a matter of acquisition. Muḥammad ibn
Mubārak Buḵẖārī, on the other hand, says that the whole argument of
the realist proceeds on the assumption that the concept of my existence
is something immediate--a position which can be controverted.[84:1] If,
says he, we admit that the concept of my existence is immediate,
abstract existence cannot be regarded as a constitutive element of this
conception. And if the realist maintains that the perception of a
particular object is immediate, we admit the truth of what he says; but
it would not follow, as he is anxious to establish, that the so called
underlying essence is immediately known as objectively real. The
realist argument, moreover, demands that the mind ought not to be able
to conceive the predication of qualities to things. We cannot conceive,
"snow is white", because whiteness, being a part of this immediate
judgment, must also be immediately known without any predication. Mulla
Muḥammad Hās̱ẖim Ḥusainī remarks[85:1] that this reasoning is
erroneous. The mind in the act of predicating whiteness of snow is
working on a purely ideal existence--the quality of whiteness--and not
on an objectively real essence of which the qualities are mere facets or
aspects. Ḥusainī, moreover, anticipates Hamilton, and differs from other
realists in holding that the so-called unknowable essence of the object
is also immediately known. The object, he says, is immediately perceived
as one.[85:2] We do not successively perceive the various aspects of
what happens to be the objects of our perception.
[84:1] Muḥammad ibn Mubārak's commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain,
fol. 5a.
[85:1] Ḥusainī's commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain, fol. 13a.
[85:2] Ḥusainī's commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain, fol. 14b.
(2) The idealist, says the realist, reduces all quality to mere
subjective relations. His argument leads him to deny the underlying
essence of things, and to look upon them as entirely heterogeneous
collections of qualities, the essence of which consists merely in the
phenomenal fact of their perception. In spite of his belief in the
complete heterogeneity of things, he applies the word existence to all
things--a tacit admission that there is some essence common to all the
various forms of existence. Abu’l-Ḥasan al-As̱ẖ‘arī replies that this
application is only a verbal convenience, and is not meant to indicate
the so-called internal homogeneity of things. But the universal
application of the word existence by the idealist, must mean, according
to the realist, that the existence of a thing either constitutes its
very essence, or it is something superadded to the underlying essence of
the thing. The first supposition is a virtual admission as to the
homogeneity of things; since we cannot maintain that existence peculiar
to one thing is fundamentally different from existence peculiar to
another. The supposition that existence is something superadded to the
essence of a thing leads to an absurdity; since in this case the essence
will have to be regarded as something distinct from existence; and the
denial of essence (with the As̱ẖ‘arite) would blot out the distinction
between existence and non-existence. Moreover, what was the essence
before existence was superadded to it? We must not say that the essence
was ready to receive existence before it actually did receive it; since
this statement would imply that the essence was non-existence before it
received existence. Likewise the statement that the essence has the
power of receiving the quality of non-existence, implies the absurdity
that it does already exist. Existence, therefore, must be regarded as
forming a part of the essence. But if it forms a part of the essence,
the latter will have to be regarded as a compound. If, on the other
hand, existence is external to the essence, it must be something
contingent because of its dependence on something other than itself. Now
everything contingent must have a cause. If this cause is the essence
itself, it would follow that the essence existed before it existed;
since the cause must precede the effect in the fact of existence. If,
however, the cause of existence is something other than the essence, it
follows that the existence of God also must be explained by some cause
other than the essence of God--an absurd conclusion which turns the
necessary into the contingent.[88:1] This argument of the realist is
based on a complete misunderstanding of the idealist position. He does
not see that the idealist never regarded the fact of existence as
something superadded to the essence of a thing; but always held it to be
identical with the essence. The essence, says ibn Mubārak,[88:2] is the
cause of existence without being chronologically before it. The
existence of the essence constitutes its very being; it is not dependent
for it on something other than itself.
[88:1] Ibn Mubārak's Commentary, fol. 8b.
[88:2] Ibn Mubārak's Commentary, fol. 9a.
The truth is that both sides are far from a true theory of knowledge.
The agnostic realist who holds that behind the phenomenal qualities of a
thing, there is an essence operating as their cause, is guilty of a
glaring contradiction. He holds that underlying the thing there is an
_unknowable_ essence or substratum which is _known_ to exist. The
As̱ẖ‘arite idealist, on the other hand, misunderstands the process of
knowledge. He ignores the mental activity involved in the act of
knowledge; and looks upon perceptions as mere presentations which are
determined, as he says, by God. But if the order of presentations
requires a cause to account for it, why should not that cause be sought
in the original constitution of matter as Locke did? Moreover, the
theory that knowledge is a mere passive perception or awareness of what
is presented, leads to certain inadmissible conclusions which the
As̱ẖ‘arite never thought of:--
(a). They did not see that their purely subjective conception of
knowledge swept away all possibility of error. If the existence of a
thing is merely the fact of its being presented, there is no reason why
it should be cognised as different from what it actually is.
(b). They did not see that on their theory of knowledge, our
fellow-beings like other elements of the physical order, would have no
higher reality than mere states of my consciousness.
(c). If knowledge is a mere receptivity of presentations, God who, as
cause of presentations, is active in regard to the act of our knowledge,
must not be aware of our presentations. From the As̱ẖ‘arite point of
view this conclusion is fatal to their whole position. They cannot say
that presentations on their ceasing to be my presentations, continue to
be presentations to God's consciousness.
Another question connected with the nature of the essence is, whether it
is caused or uncaused. The followers of Aristotle, or philosophers as
they are generally called by their opponents, hold that the underlying
essence of things is uncaused. The As̱ẖ‘arite hold the opposite view.
Essence, says the Aristotelian, cannot be acted upon by any external
agent.[90:1] Al-Kātibī argues that if, for instance, the essence of
humanity had resulted from the operation of an external activity, doubt
as to its being the real essence of humanity would have been possible.
As a matter of fact we never entertain such a doubt; it follows,
therefore, that the essence is not due to the activity of an agency
external to itself. The idealist starts with the realist distinction of
essence and existence, and argues that the realist line of argument
would lead to the absurd proposition--that man is uncaused; since he
must be regarded, according to the realist, as a combination of two
uncaused essences--existence and humanity.
[90:1] Ibn Mubārak's Commentary, fol. 20a.
B. _The Nature of Knowledge._
The followers of Aristotle, true to their position as to the independent
objective reality of the essence, define knowledge as "receiving images
of external things".[91:1] It is possible to conceive, they argue, an
object which is externally unreal, and to which other qualities can be
attributed. But when we attribute to it the quality of existence, actual
existence is necessitated; since the affirmation of the quality of a
thing is a part of the affirmation of that thing. If, therefore, the
predication of existence does not necessitate actual objective existence
of the thing, we are driven to deny externality altogether, and to hold
that the thing exists in the mind as a mere idea. But the affirmation
of a thing, says Ibn Mubārak, constitutes the very existence of the
thing. The idealist makes no such distinction as affirmation and
existence. To infer from the above argument that the thing must be
regarded as existing in the mind, is unjustifiable. "Ideal" existence
follows only from the denial of externality which the As̱ẖ‘arite do not
deny; since they hold that knowledge is a relation between the knower
and the known which is known as external. Al-Kātibī's proposition that
if the thing does not exist as external existence, it must exist as
ideal or mental existence, is self-contradictory; since, on his
principles, everything that exists in idea exists in externality.[92:1]
[91:1] Ibn Mubārak, fol. 11a.
[92:1] Ibn Mubārak, fol. 11b.
C. _The Nature of Non-existence._
Al-Kātibī explains and criticises the proposition, maintained by
contemporary philosophers generally--"That the existent is good, and the
non-existent is evil".[92:2] The fact of murder, he says, is not evil
because the murderer had the power of committing such a thing; or
because the instrument of murder had the power of cutting; or because
the neck of the murdered had the capacity of being cut asunder. It is
evil because it signifies the negation of life--a condition which is
non-existential, and not existential like the conditions indicated
above. But in order to show that evil is non-existence, we should make
an inductive inquiry, and examine all the various cases of evil. A
perfect induction, however, is impossible, and an incomplete induction
cannot prove the point. Al-Kātibī, therefore, rejects this proposition,
and holds that "non-existence is absolute nothing".[93:1] The possible
'_essences_', according to him, are not lying fixed in space waiting for
the attribute of existence; otherwise fixity in space would have to be
regarded as possessing no existence. But his critics hold that this
argument is true only on the supposition that fixity in space and
existence are identical. Fixity in externality, says Ibn Mubārak, is a
conception wider than existence. All existence is external, but all that
is external is not necessarily existent.
[92:2] Ibn Mubārak, fol. 14a.
[93:1] Ibn Mubārak's Commentary, fol. 14b.
The interest of the As̱ẖ‘arite in the dogma of the Resurrection--the
possibility of the reappearance of the non-existent as existent--led
them to advocate the apparently absurd proposition that "non-existence
or nothing _is_ something". They argued that, since we make judgments
about the non-existent, it is, therefore, known; and the fact of its
knowability indicates that "the nothing" is not absolutely nothing. The
knowable is a case of affirmation and the non-existent being knowable,
is a case of affirmation.[94:1] Al-Kātibī denies the truth of the Major.
Impossible things, he says, are known, yet they do not externally exist.
Al-Rāzī criticises this argument accusing Al-Kātibī of the ignorance of
the fact that the '_essence_' exists in the mind, and yet is known as
external. Al-Kātibī supposes that the knowledge of a thing necessitates
its existence as an independent objective reality. Moreover it should be
remembered that the As̱ẖ‘arite discriminate between positive and
existent on the one hand, and non-existent and negative on the other.
They say that all existent is positive, but the converse of this
proposition is not true. There is certainly a relation between the
existent and the non-existent, but there is absolutely no relation
between the positive and the negative. We do not say, as Al-Kātibī
holds, that the impossible is non-existent; we say that the impossible
is only negative. Substances which do exist are something positive. As
regards the attribute which cannot be conceived as existing apart from
the substance, it is neither existent nor non-existent, but something
between the two. Briefly the As̱ẖ‘arite position is as follows:--
"A thing has a proof of its existence or not. If not, it is called
negative. If it has a proof of its existence, it is either substance or
attribute. If it is substance and has the attribute of existence or
non-existence, (i.e. it is perceived or not) it is existent or
non-existent accordingly. If it is attribute, it is neither existent nor
non-existent".[95:1]
[94:1] Ibn Mubārak's Commentary, fol. 15a.
[95:1] Ibn Mubārak's Commentary, fol. 15b.
CHAP. V.
ṢŪFĪISM.
§ I.
The origin and Qurānic Justification of Ṣūfīism.