set clearly before our minds the metaphysical assumptions on which it
was built. Those assumptions are so far removed from the philosophical
and scientific conceptions of our own time that the modern man can
scarcely grasp them. But in those days even the greatest thinkers
believed these airy abstractions to be the solid truths of philosophy,
rock-based on incontestable evidences. Hence it is not surprising that
Maimonides, like the rest, was convinced beyond doubt that this
“scientific” teaching was the uttermost limit of human understanding,
and could never be changed or modified. So absolute, indeed, was his
conviction that he went so far as to put this teaching in a dogmatic
form, as though it had been a revelation from above.[89]
The following is an outline of his dogmas, so far as is necessary for
our purpose:
“All bodies beneath the firmament are compounded of matter and
form.”[90] But “form” here is not “form as vulgarly understood, which is
_the picture and image of the thing_”; it is “the natural form,” that is
to say, the reality of the thing, “that by virtue of which it is what it
is,” as distinct from other things which are not of its kind.[91]
“Matter is never _perceived_ without form, nor form without matter; it
is man who divides existing bodies in his consciousness, and _knows_
that they are compounded of matter and form.”[92] For since the form is
the reality, by virtue of which the thing is what it is, it follows that
matter without form would be a thing without a real existence of its
own: in other words, a mere intellectual abstraction. And it is
superfluous to add that form without matter does not exist in the
sublunar world, which consists wholly of “bodies.”[93]
“The nature of matter is that form cannot _persist_ in it, but it
continually divests itself of one form and takes on another.” It is
because of this property of matter that things come into being and cease
to be, whereas form by its nature does not desire change, and ceases to
be only “on account of its connection with matter.” Hence “_generic_
forms are all _constant_,” though they exist in _individuals which
change_, which come and go; but _individual_ forms necessarily perish,
since their existence is possible only in combination with finite
matter.[94]
“The soul of all flesh is its form,” and the body is the matter in which
this form clothes itself. “When, therefore, the body, which is
compounded of the elements, is dissolved, the soul perishes, because it
exists only with the body” and has no permanent existence except
_generically_, like other forms.[95]
“The soul is one, but it has many different faculties,” and therefore
philosophers speak of parts of the soul. “By this they do not mean that
it is divisible as bodies are; they merely enumerate its different
_faculties_.” The parts of the soul, in this sense, are five: the
nutritive, the sensitive, the imaginative, the emotional, and the
rational. The first four parts are common to man and to other animals,
though “each kind of animal has a particular soul” special to itself,
which functions in it in a particular way, so that, for instance, the
emotion of a man is not like the emotion of an ass. But the essential
superiority of the soul of man lies in its possession of the additional
fifth part—the rational: this is “that power in man by which he thinks
and acquires knowledge and distinguishes between wrong actions and
right.”[96]
Thus the soul of man differs from the souls of other living things only
in the greater variety and higher quality of its functions. In essence
it is, like “the soul of all flesh,” simply a form associated with
matter, having no existence apart from the body. When the body is
resolved into its elements the soul also perishes with all its parts,
_including the rational_.
This extreme conclusion had already been deduced from the teaching of
Aristotle by some of his early commentators (such as Alexander
Aphrodisius). There were, indeed, other commentators who, unable to
abandon belief in the survival of the soul, tried to explain Aristotle’s
words in conformity with that belief by excluding the rational part from
the “natural form” and attributing to it a separate and eternal
existence.[97] But Maimonides was too logical not to see the
inconsistency involved in that interpretation; and so he sided with the
extremists, though their view was absolutely opposed to that belief in
personal immortality which in his day had come to be generally accepted
by Jews. Had he been content with that view alone, he would inevitably
have gone back to the conception of primitive Judaism, as we find it in
the Pentateuch: that immortality belongs not to the individual, but to
the nation; that the national form persists for ever, like the generic
form in living things, and the changing individuals are its matter. In
that case his whole ethical system would have been very different from
what it is. But Maimonides supplemented the teaching of Aristotle by
another idea, which he took from the Arabs; and this idea, amplified and
completed, he made the basis of his ethical system, which thereby
acquired a new and original character, distinguished by its fusion of
the social and the individual elements.
The idea is in substance this: that while reason, which is present in a
human being from birth, is only one of the faculties of the soul, which
is a unity of all its parts and ceases wholly to exist when the body
ceases, yet this faculty is no more than a “potential faculty,” by
virtue of which its possessor is able to apprehend ideas; and therefore
its cessation is inevitable only if it remains throughout its existence
in its original condition—in the condition, that is, of a “potential
faculty” whose potentiality has not been realised. But if a human being
makes use of this faculty and attains to the actual apprehension of
Ideas, then his intellect has proceeded from the stage of potentiality
to that of actuality: it has achieved real existence, which is permanent
and indestructible, like the existence of those Ideas which it has
absorbed into itself and with which it has become one. Thus we are to
distinguish between the “potential intellect,” which is given to a human
being when he comes into the world, and is merely a function of the
body, and the “acquired intellect,” which a human being wins for himself
by apprehending the Ideas. This acquired intellect “is not a function of
the body and is really separate from the body.” Hence it does not cease
to exist with the cessation of the body; it persists for ever, like the
other “separate Intelligences.”[98]
Now since the form of every existing thing is that individual essence by
virtue of which it is what it is and is distinguished from all other
existing things, it is clear that the acquired intellect, which gives
its possessor immortality, is the essence of the human being who has
been privileged to acquire it: in other words, his true form, by which
he is distinguished from the rest of mankind. In other men the form is
the transient soul given to them at birth; but in him who has the
acquired intellect even the soul itself is only a kind of matter. His
essential form is “the higher knowledge,” “_the form of the soul_,”
which he has won for himself by assimilating “Ideas which are separate
from matter.”[99]
Thus mankind is divided into two species, the difference between which
is greater than that between mankind as a whole and other kinds of
animals. For man is distinguished from the rest of animate nature only
by having a distinctive form: in quality his form is like the forms of
other living things, seeing that in his case as in theirs the individual
form perishes. But the distinctive form of the man who has the acquired
intellect is distinct in _quality_; for it persists for ever even after
its separation from matter. Its affinity is not with the other forms in
the lower world, but with those “separate forms” in the world
above.[100]
Thus far Maimonides followed the Arabs. But here the Arab philosophers
stopped: they did not probe this idea further, did not carry it to its
logical conclusions. Maimonides, on the contrary, refused to stop
half-way; he did not shrink from the extremest consequences of the idea.
First of all, he defined the content and the method of the intellectual
process by which man attains to “acquired intellect.” If we say that the
intellect becomes actual and eternal by comprehending the Ideas and
becoming one with them,[101] it follows that the content of the Ideas
themselves must be actual and eternal. For how could something real and
eternal be created by the acquisition of something itself unreal or not
eternal? Thus we exclude from the category of Ideas by the apprehension
of which the acquired intellect is obtained: (1) those sciences which
contain only abstract laws and not the explanation of real things, such
as mathematics and logic; (2) those sciences which teach not what
actually exists, but what ought to be done for the achievement of
certain objects, such as ethics and æsthetics; (3) the knowledge of
individual forms, which have only a temporary existence in combination
with matter, such as the histories of famous men and the like. All
knowledge of this kind, though it is useful and in some cases even
necessary as preparation, is not in itself capable of making the
intellect actual. What, then, are the Ideas by the apprehension of which
the intellect does become actual? They are those whose content is true
and eternal Being. This Being includes (going from lower to higher): (1)
the generic forms of all things in the lower world, which are, as we
know, constant; (2) the heavenly bodies, which, though compounded of
matter and form, are eternal; (3) the forms which are free of matter
(God and the separate Intelligences).[102] All this relates to the
_content_ of the intellectual process; but there is also a very
important definition of its _method_—a definition which is implied in
the conception itself. The result must be achieved _by the intellect’s
own activity_: that is to say, man must apprehend the truth of Being by
rational proofs, and must not simply accept truth from others by an act
of faith. For apprehension by this latter method is purely external;
reason has had no active part in it, and therefore that union of the
intellect with its object, which is what makes the intellect actual, is
lacking.[103]
And now let us see what are the ethical consequences of this idea.
The question of the _ultimate_ purpose of the universe is for Maimonides
an idle question, because it is not within our power to find a
satisfactory answer. For whatever purpose we find, it is always possible
to ask: What is the purpose of that purpose? And in the end we are bound
to say: “God willed it so,” or, “His wisdom decided so.” But at the same
time Maimonides agrees with Aristotle and his school that the
_proximate_ purpose of all that exists in this world of ours is man. For
in that “course of genesis and destruction” which goes on in all the
genera of existing things we see a kind of striving on the part of
matter to attain to the most perfect form possible (“to produce the most
perfect being that can be produced”); and since “man is the most perfect
being formed of matter,” it follows that “in this respect it can truly
be said that all earthly things exist for man.”[104]
Now if man is the proximate purpose of all things on earth, “we are
compelled to inquire further, why man exists and what was the purpose of
his creation.” Maimonides’ view of the human soul being what it is,
there is, of course, a ready answer to this question. The purpose of
man’s existence, like that of all material existence, is “to produce the
most perfect being that can be produced”: and what is the most perfect
being if not the possessor of the “acquired intellect,” who has attained
the most perfect form possible to man? The purpose of man’s life, then,
is “to picture the Ideas in his soul.” For “only wisdom can add to his
inner strength and raise him from low to high estate; for he was a man
potentially, and has now become a man actually, and man before he thinks
and acquires knowledge is esteemed an animal.”[105]
But if this is so, can we still ask what is the highest moral duty and
what is the most perfect moral good? Obviously, there is no higher moral
duty than this: that man strive to fulfil that purpose for which he was
created; and there is no more perfect moral good than the fulfilment of
that purpose. All other human activities are only “to preserve man’s
existence, to the end that that one activity may be fulfilled.”[106]
Here, then, we reach a new moral criterion and a complete
“transvaluation of values” as regards human actions in their moral
aspect. Every action has a moral value, whether positive or negative,
only in so far as it helps or hinders man in his effort to fulfil the
purpose of his being—the actualisation of his intellect. “Good” in the
moral sense is all that helps to this end; “evil” is all that hinders.
If we determine according to this view the positions of good actions in
the ethical scale, we shall find that higher and lower have changed
places. At the very top, of course, will stand that one activity which
leads direct to the goal—the apprehension of eternal Being by rational
proof: that is to say, the study of physics and metaphysics. Below this
the scale bifurcates into the two main lines of study and action. In the
sphere of study, mathematics and logic have special moral importance,
because knowledge of these sciences is a necessary preliminary to the
understanding of Being by rational proof. Below them come subjects which
have a practical object (ethics, etc.): for the actions with which these
subjects deal are themselves only means to the attainment of the supreme
end, and therefore the study of these subjects is but a means to a
means.[107] In the sphere of action, again, there are different degrees.
Those human actions which have as their object the satisfaction of
bodily needs have positive moral value only in a limited sense: in so
far as they effectively keep off physical pain and mental distraction,
and thus allow a man to give himself untroubled to the pursuit of the
Ideas.[108] Above these are actions which are connected with “perfection
of character,” because that perfection is necessary for the attainment
of true wisdom. “For while man pursues after his lusts, and makes
feeling master over intellect, and enslaves his reason to his passions,
the divine power—that is, Reason—cannot become his.”[109] Hence even
perfection of character has no absolute moral value, any more than other
things which appertain to practical life. The moral value of everything
is determined by its relation to the fulfilment of the intellectual
purpose, and by that alone.[110]
Starting from this standpoint, Maimonides lays down the principle that
virtue is “the mean which is equidistant from both extremes.”[111] This
principle is taken, of course, from Aristotle’s doctrine of virtue. But
Aristotle did not set up a higher moral criterion by reference to which
the mean point could be determined in every case. For him all virtue was
really but a code of good manners to which the polite Greek should
conform, being enabled by his own good taste to fasten instinctively on
the point equidistant from the ugliness of the two extremes. Not so
Maimonides, the Jew. He made this principle the basis of morality in the
true sense, because he coupled with it a formulation of the supreme
moral end. This moral end, for which the virtues are a preparation,[112]
compels us and enables us to distinguish between the extremes and the
mean. For the extremes, being apt to impair physical health or mental
peace, prevent a man from fulfilling his intellectual function; the mean
is that which helps him on his road.[113]
But with all this we have not yet a complete answer to our question
about the purpose of the existence of the human race as a whole. We know
that the human race really consists of two different species: “potential
man” and “actual man.” The second species, indeed, does not come into
existence from the start as an independent species, but is produced by
development out of the first. But this development is a very long one,
and depends on many conditions which are difficult of fulfilment, so
that only a few men—sometimes only “one in a generation”—are privileged
to complete it, while the great majority of mankind remains always at
the stage of “potential man.” Thus the question remains: What is the
purpose of the existence of the great mass of men “who cannot picture
the Idea in their souls”? For when we say that all material things exist
for the sake of the existence of man, we do not mean that all other
things are but a “necessary evil,” an evil incidental to the production
of the desired end—in other words, merely Nature’s unsuccessful
experiments in her struggle towards “the production of the most perfect
being that can be produced,” like the many imperfect specimens of his
art that the inexpert artificer turns out before he succeeds in creating
one that is perfect. We cannot so regard them in the face of the
evidence that we have of the wonderful wisdom of creative nature, which
proves that the Artificer can do his work in the way best fitted to
achieve his object. We must therefore assume that “things do not exist
for nothing”; that Nature, in her progress towards the production of the
most perfect being, has formed all other things for the benefit of that
most perfect being, whether for food or “for his advantage otherwise
than by way of food,” in such a way that the sum-total of things in the
inferior world is not merely a ladder by which to ascend to the
production of man, but also a means to secure the permanence of man when
once he has been produced. It follows, therefore, that all the millions
of men “who cannot picture the Idea in their souls” cannot be void of
purpose, like the spoilt creations of the artist, which, not being
suited to their object, are left lying about until they perish of
themselves. There must of necessity be some advantage in their
existence, as in that of the other kinds of created things. What, then,
is this advantage? The answer is implied in the question. “Potential
man,” like other earthly things, exists without doubt for the benefit of
the “perfect being,” of “actual man.” In conformity with this view
Maimonides lays it down that “these men exist for two reasons. First, to
serve the one man (the ‘perfect’): for man has many wants, and
Methuselah’s life were not long enough to learn all the crafts whereof a
man has absolute need for his living: and when should he find leisure to
learn and to acquire wisdom? The rest of mankind, therefore, exists to
set right those things that are necessary to them in the commonwealth,
to the end that the Wise Man may find his needs provided for and that
wisdom may spread. And secondly, the man without wisdom exists because
the Wise are very few, and therefore the masses were created to make a
society for the Wise, that they be not lonely.”[114]
Thus the existence of the majority of mankind has a purpose of its own,
which is different from that of the existence of the chosen minority.
This minority is an end in itself—it is the embodiment of the most
perfect form in the inferior world; whereas the purpose of the majority
lies not in its own existence, but in the fact that it creates the
conditions necessary to the existence of the minority: it creates, that
is, human society with all its cultural possessions (in the material
sense), without which it is impossible that wisdom should spread.
Thus we have introduced into ethics a new element—the social element.
For if each man could attain the degree of “actual man” without
dependence on the help of human society for the provision of his needs,
the moral criterion would be purely individual. Each man would be free
to apply for himself the formula at which we arrived above:—all that
helps me to fulfil my intellectual function is for me morally good; all
that hinders me is for me morally evil. But if the attainment of the
supreme end is possible only for the few, and is possible for them only
through the existence of the society of the many, which has for its
function the creation of the conditions most favourable to the
production of the perfect being: then we are confronted with a new moral
criterion, social in character. All that helps towards the perfection of
society in the manner required for the fulfilment of its function is
morally good; all that retards this development is morally evil. This
moral criterion is binding for the minority and the majority alike. The
majority, whose existence has no purpose beyond their participation in
the work of society, can obviously have no other moral criterion than
the social. But even the minority, though they are capable of attaining
the supreme end, and have therefore an individualistic moral criterion,
are none the less bound to subordinate themselves to the social
criterion where the two are in conflict. For as society becomes more
perfect, and the material basis is provided with less expenditure of
effort, so much the greater will be the possibility of producing the
perfect being with more regularity and frequency. Hence from the point
of view of the supreme end of the whole human race—and that is the
source of moral duty—the well-being of society is more important than
that of an individual man, even though he belong to the perfect
few.[115]
From this point of view all branches of man’s work which further the
perfection of society and the lightening of the burden of life’s needs
have a moral value, because they help more or less to create that
environment which is necessary for the realisation of the most perfect
form in the chosen few. Hence, to take one instance, Maimonides reckons
the fine arts among the things that further the attainment of mankind’s
end (though naturally beauty has in his system no independent value):
“for the soul grows weary and the mind is confused by the constant
contemplation of ugly things, just as the body grows weary in doing
heavy work, until it rest and be refreshed, and then it returns to its
normal condition: so does the soul also need to take thought for the
repose of the senses by contemplating pleasant things until its
weariness is dispelled.” Thus “the making of sculptures and pictures in
buildings, vessels, and garments” is not “wasted work.”[116]
To sum up: society stands between the two species of men and links them
together. For the “actual man” society is a means to the attainment of
his end; for the “potential man” it is the purpose of his own being. The
“potential man,” then, being in himself but a transient thing, which
comes into being and ceases to be, like all other living things, must
content himself with the comforting knowledge that his fleeting
existence is after all not wasted, because he is a limb of the social
body which gives birth to the immortal perfect beings, and his work, in
whatever sphere, helps to produce these perfect beings.
Thus Maimonides gets back to the view of early Judaism, which made the
life of society the purpose of the life of the individual, although at
first he seemed to diverge widely from it in setting up the one “perfect
man,” the possessor of “acquired intellect,” as the sole end of the life
of humanity at large.