between Maimonides’ ethics and another doctrine which has recently
gained such wide currency—the doctrine of Nietzsche. Both conceive the
purpose of human existence to lie in the creation of the most perfect
human type; and both make the majority a tool of that minority in which
the supreme type is realised. But in fact the two doctrines are
essentially different, and the resemblance is only external. In the
first place, Nietzsche’s Superman is quite unlike Maimonides’ Superman
in character. Nietzsche, Hellenic in spirit, finds the highest
perfection in a perfect harmony of all bodily and spiritual excellences.
But Maimonides, true to the spirit of Judaism, concentrates on one
central point, and gives pre-eminence to a spiritual element—that of
intellect. And secondly, the relation of his “actual man” to society is
different from that of Nietzsche’s Superman. The Superman seeks an
outlet for his powers in the world outside him; he strives to embody his
will in action, and tolerates no obstacle in his path. He is therefore
eternally at war with human society; for society puts a limit to his
will and sets obstacles on his path by means of its moral laws, which
have been framed not to suit his individual needs, but to suit the needs
of the majority. Maimonides’ “actual man,” on the contrary, aims not at
embodying his will in the external world, but at perfecting his form in
his inner world. He demands nothing of society except that it satisfy
his elementary wants, and so leave him at peace to pursue his inner
perfection. He does not therefore regard society as his enemy. On the
contrary, he sees in society an ally, without whose aid he cannot attain
his end, and whose well-being will secure his own.
II
So far I have purposely refrained from bringing the religious element
into the ethics of Maimonides, with the object of showing that he really
based his view of human life on philosophy alone, and did not give way a
single inch in order to effect a compromise between his philosophy and
the religious ideas which were accepted by Jews in his time. None the
less, there is no doubt that Maimonides was a religious man, and
believed in the divinity of the Law of Moses: only his idea of the
nature of religion, its function and its value, was a new one, and
differed entirely from the accepted idea, because here also, in the
sphere of religion itself, he remained faithful to those fundamental
axioms on which he based his moral system.
Does philosophy leave any room for a belief in the existence of a
revealed religion—that is to say, in a Law given to men by God through a
supernatural revelation of himself to one or to many individuals? This
question turns on another: Is the existence of the world independent of
time and external cause, or is it the result of a creative act of God,
as the Pentateuch teaches? According to the first view, “everything in
the Universe is the result of fixed laws, Nature does not change, and
there is nothing supernatural.” There is therefore no room for
revelation, which upsets the order of nature, and “the whole teaching of
Scripture would be rejected.” But if the world is the result of a
creative act, and nature is consequently nothing but a revelation of the
divine will, made in such time and place as God’s wisdom decreed, then
it is no longer impossible that the divine will should one day reveal
itself a second time in a supernatural manner. Hence, “accepting the
Creation, we find that ... revelation is possible, and that every
difficulty in this question is removed.” For if we ask: “Why has God
inspired a certain person and not another? Why has he revealed his Law
to one particular nation, and at one particular time?” and so forth—“We
answer to all these questions: He willed it so; or, His wisdom decided
so. Just as he created the world according to his will, at a certain
time, in a certain form, and as we do not understand why his will or his
wisdom decided upon that peculiar form, and upon that peculiar time, so
we do not know why his will or his wisdom determined any of the things
mentioned in the preceding questions.”[117]
Maimonides gave much thought to the question of the creation of the
world, and examined it from every side. He tried to ascertain whether
there was anything conclusive in the evidences adduced by his
predecessors in favour of the eternity of the world or of its creation;
and he did not scruple to avow that if he had found a convincing proof
of the eternity of the world he would not have rejected it out of
respect for the _Torah_. But purely philosophic investigation led him to
the conclusion that there was really no convincing proof one way or the
other. Seeing then, he says, that “the eternity of the universe has not
been demonstrated, there is no need to reject Scripture,” and we may
believe in the creation theory, which has “the authority of Prophecy,”
without any sin against our reason.[118]
But when once we have adopted the creation theory, revelation becomes
possible, and there is nothing to prevent our holding the belief which
our nation has accepted throughout its history: that at a definite point
in time the Law was given to our people from heaven through the
instrumentality of the chief of the Prophets, who received a unique
inspiration from the divine source, and was taught what to tell his
people in the name of God.[119] It is not relevant (as we have seen
above) to ask why this Law was given to us and not to others, at that
particular time and at no other. But it is relevant to ask what is the
purpose of this Law and what benefit it was meant to produce. For it can
scarcely be supposed that God would interfere with the order of nature
for no advantage or object; and if we cannot understand the working of
the divine wisdom in every detail, we must and we can form for ourselves
some general conception of the object for which the divine teaching was
given to us and the way in which it can help men to attain their
end.[120]
Now it is clear that the divine teaching, whether on its theoretical or
on its practical side, cannot lead a man straight to his supreme
goal—the raising of his intellect from potentiality to actuality. For
this goal, as we know, is to be attained not by good actions, and not
even by the _received_ knowledge of truth, but only by the activity of
the intellect itself, which must arrive at truth by the long road of
scientific proof. And if religion cannot raise its followers to the
stage of “actual man” in a direct way, we must conclude that its whole
purpose is to prepare the instrument which is necessary for the
attainment of that end: to wit, human society, which creates the
environment of the “actual man.” The aim of religion, then, is “to
regulate the soul and the body” of society at large, so as to make it
capable of producing the greatest possible number of “actual men.” To
this end religion must necessarily be popular: its teachings and
prescriptions must be aimed not at the chosen few, who strive after
ultimate perfection, but at the great mass of society. To this mass it
must give, in the first place, true opinions in a form suited to the
intelligence of the many; secondly, a code of morals, individual and
social, which makes for the health of society and the prosperity of its
members; and thirdly, a code of religious observances intended to
educate the many by keeping these true opinions and moral duties
constantly before their minds.[121] In these three ways—the third of
which is merely ancillary to the other two—religion aims at raising the
cultural level of society, so as to make a clear road for the perfect
individual: to provide him from the beginning of his life with an
environment of correct opinions and good morals, and save him from the
necessity of frittering away his strength in a twofold battle—against
the evil conditions of a corrupt society, and against false opinions
implanted in himself by that society. Religion is there to save him from
this battle against corruption without and falsehood within: to secure
that as soon as he shows the ability and the will to attain perfection
he shall find favourable conditions prepared for him, and proceed
towards his goal without let or hindrance.
This was how Maimonides conceived the function of the divine religion;
this was how he was bound to conceive it, his philosophy being what it
was. But as he was also persuaded by various reasoned proofs that the
Law of Moses was the divine religion,[122] he could obviously have no
doubt that this Law must contain on its theoretical side the “true
opinions” (that is, those philosophical opinions which he considered
true), albeit in popular form, and on its practical side a moral
doctrine for the individual and for society which was adapted to the end
desiderated by his philosophy, together with the form of religious
observance best calculated to educate society in the right opinions and
the right morality.
It is at this point that Maimonides’ task becomes difficult. Armed with
this _a priori_ judgment, he comes to close quarters with the _Torah_:
and he finds that in many matters, both of theory and of practice, it
is, if taken at its face value, diametrically opposed to what his
pre-conceived ideas would lead him to expect. The beliefs embodied in
the _Torah_ seem to be directly opposed to the most fundamental
philosophical truths of Maimonides’ system; the actions prescribed in
the _Torah_ contain much that it is difficult to reconcile with the
social purpose of the divine religion as conceived by that system. What
course, then, was open to Maimonides? To compromise between
philosophical and religious truth, as many had done before, was for him
impossible. For every compromise means simply that both sides give way;
and how could Maimonides, with his conviction that the attainment of
truth by means of proof is the end of human existence and the only way
to eternal happiness, give up one jot of this truth for the sake of
another truth, of inferior value inasmuch as it has come to us only
through tradition? Thus he has but one possible course. Necessity
compels him to subdue religion absolutely to the demands of philosophy:
in other words, to explain the words of the _Torah_ throughout in
conformity with the truth of philosophy, and to make the _Torah_ fulfil
in every part the function which philosophy imposes on it.
This necessity worked wonders. By dint of enormous labour Maimonides
discovered various extraordinary ways of interpreting the _Torah_; with
wonderful skill he found support for his interpretations in words and
phrases scattered about the Scriptures and the Talmud; until at last he
succeeded in making religion what it had to be according to his belief.
This is not the place to explain Maimonides’ methods of exegesis in
detail. For us to-day they are but a sort of monument to the weakness of
the written word in the face of a living psychological force which
demands that “yes” shall become “no” and “no” be turned into “yes.” This
psychological force led Maimonides to turn the “living God” of the
_Torah_ into an abstract philosophical conception, empty of all content
except a collection of negations; to make the “Righteous Man” of Judaism
a philosopher blessed with “acquired intellect”; to transform the
“future world” of the Talmud into the union of the acquired intellect
with the “active intellect”; to metamorphose the Biblical penalty of
“cutting off” into the disappearance of the form when the matter is
resolved: and so forth. All this he did in conformity with his
“philosophic truth,” of which he refused to change one atom.[123]
So, too, with the practical side of religion. Only in a very roundabout
way could practical religion be brought under the general principles
which Maimonides deduced from his philosophy. The difficulty was
especially great in the case of the laws of religious worship, many of
which have no apparent educative value as a means of confirming true
opinions and morality. But here also necessity did its work, and
Maimonides managed to find educational “reasons” for all the religious
laws, not excepting those which seem on the face of them actually to
confirm false opinions and to arouse inclinations opposed to
morality—such as, for instance, sacrifices and the accompanying
rites.[124] None the less, he was compelled after all his hard labour to
lay down this strange axiom: that there is a reason for the commandments
in a general way, but not for their details, these having been ordained
only because there can be no universal without particulars of some kind
or other.[125]
Maimonides had an easier task in bringing the moral laws of the _Torah_
within his system. In themselves these laws demanded as a rule no heroic
exegesis to show their utility for the social order: indeed, the _Torah_
often emphasises this utility, which in any case is self-evident in most
commandments of this class. But in arranging these commandments in order
of moral value Maimonides was compelled to coerce religion by his
characteristic methods into conformity with his system, according to
which good actions—whether moral or religious—are of an inferior order,
having no value except that of a necessary preparation of the individual
and of society for the attainment of the supreme moral good, the
perfection of intellect. This attitude of Maimonides towards moral
actions, which we have met already as a philosophical postulate, is just
as strongly maintained after such actions have been invested with a
religious sanctity. Hence religion affects Maimonides’ philosophical
ethics only to this extent, that it makes all the observances of
religious worship a moral duty, equal in value to the other moral
duties, because religious worship is one way of leading mankind to the
attainment of the supreme moral good in the chosen individuals.
What, then, is the “divine religion”—that is to say, the teaching of
Judaism—according to the system of Maimonides?
On its theoretical side it is popular metaphysics, and on its practical
side social ethics and pædagogics. It cannot bring man to his ultimate
perfection; its whole function is to regulate society—that is, the
masses—in accordance with the requirements of the perfect man. Hence
religion is not above reason, but below it: just as the masses, for whom
religion was made, are below the perfect man. Reason is the supreme
judge; religion is absolutely subordinate to reason, and cannot abrogate
one jot of its decisions. For God, who implanted the reasoning faculty
in man, that by it he might attain truth and win eternal Being, could
not at the same time demand of man that he believe in something opposed
to that very truth which is attained by reason, and is the goal of his
existence and the summit of his happiness. Even if a Prophet works
miracles in heaven and earth, and requires us therefore to believe that
there has been prophetically revealed to him some “divine” truth which
is opposed to reason, we must not believe him nor “regard his signs.”
“For reason, which declares his testimony false, is more to be trusted
than the eye which sees his signs.”[126]
But all this does not detract from the general and eternal duty of
observing in practice all the commandments of the divine religion.
Religion, like nature, is a creation of God, in which the divine will is
embodied in the form of immutable laws. And just as the laws of nature
are eternal and universally valid, admitting of no exception, though
their usefulness is only general, and “in some individual cases they
cause injury as well,” so also “the divine guidance contained in the
_Torah_ must be absolute and general,” and does not suffer change or
modification “according to the different conditions of persons and
times.” For the divine creation is “that which has the absolute
perfection possible to its species”; and that which is absolutely
perfect cannot be perfected by change or modification, but only made
less perfect.[127] Religion, it is true, was given through a Prophet,
who received the divine inspiration; but when once it had been given it
was placed outside the scope of creation, and became, like Nature after
its creation, something independent, with laws which can be investigated
and understood by the function of reason, but cannot be changed or
abrogated by the function of prophecy. It may happen, indeed, that in
accordance with the divine will, which was made an element in the nature
of things when nature was created, the Prophet can change the order of
the universe in some particular detail for a moment, so as to give a
sign of the truth of his prophecy;[128] and similarly the Prophet can
sometimes abrogate temporarily some point of the Law, to meet some
special need of the time. But just as the Prophet cannot modify or
change completely any law of nature, so he cannot modify or change
completely any law of the _Torah_. Nor can he, by his function of
prophecy, decide between opposing views on a matter which is capable of
different interpretations, because his opinion on a question of this
kind is important by virtue of his being a wise man, and not by virtue
of his being a Prophet, and it is therefore no more decisive than that
of another wise man who is not a Prophet. And “if a thousand Prophets,
all equal to Elijah and Elisha, held one view, and a thousand and one
wise men held the opposite view, we should have to follow the majority
and decide according to the thousand and one wise men and not according
to the thousand venerable Prophets.” For “God has not permitted us to
learn from Prophets, but from wise men of reasoning power and
knowledge.”[129]
What I have said so far, in this section and the preceding one, is
sufficient, I think, to give a clear idea of the fundamental beliefs of
Maimonides as to the function of man and his moral and religious duties.
But before we pass on to consider how Maimonides tried to make these
ideas the common property of his people, and what mark his system has
left on the development of Judaism, it is worth while to mention here
that Maimonides himself has given us the essence of his system in a
perfectly unmistakable form, by dividing men into various classes
according to their position on the scale of perfection. He compares the
striving of man after the perfection of his form to the striving of a
king’s subjects “to be with the king in his palace”; and using this
simile he finds in mankind six successive stages, as follows:—
1. Men who are outside the country altogether—that is, savages “who have
no religion, neither one based on speculation, nor one received by
tradition.” They are considered “as speechless animals.”
2. Men “who are in the country,” but “have their backs turned towards
the king’s palace, and their faces in another direction.” These are
“those who possess religion, belief and thought, but happen to hold
false doctrines, which they either adopted in consequence of great
mistakes made in their own speculations, or received from others who
misled them. Because of these doctrines they recede more and more from
the royal palace the more they seem to proceed. These are worse than the
first class, and under certain circumstances it may become necessary to
slay them, and to extirpate their doctrines, in order that others should
not be misled.”
3. “Those who desire to arrive at the palace, and to enter it, but have
never yet seen it.” These are “the mass of religious people; the
multitude that observe the divine commandments, but are ignorant.”
4. “Those who reach the palace, and go round about in search of the
entrance gate.” These are “those who believe traditionally in true
principles of faith, and learn the practical worship of God, but are not
trained in philosophical treatment of the principles of the _Torah_.” On
the same level with them are those who “are engaged in studying the
Mathematical Sciences and Logic.”
5. Those who “have come into the ante-chamber”—that is, “those who
undertake to investigate the principles of religion,” or those who have
“learnt to understand Physics.”
6. Those who have reached the highest stage, that of being “with the
king in the same palace.” These are they “who have mastered
Metaphysics—who have succeeded in finding a proof for everything that
can be proved—who have a true knowledge of God, so far as true knowledge
can be attained, and are near to the truth wherever only an approach to
the truth is possible.”[130]
In this classification Maimonides sets forth his ethical system in plain
terms, with perfect coldness and calm, as though there were nothing
startling about it. We of the present day feel our moral sense
particularly outraged by his cruel treatment of the second class—“those
who happen to hold false doctrines”—though we can understand that a
logical thinker like Maimonides, who always went the whole length of his
convictions, was bound to draw this conclusion from his philosophical
system. For that system regards “true opinions” as something much more
than “opinions”: it attributes to them the wonderful power of turning
the reasoning faculty into a separate and eternal being, and sees
therefore in the opposite opinions a danger to life in the most real
sense. But in Maimonides’ day the persecution of men for holding false
opinions was a common thing (though it was done in the name of religion,
not of philosophy); and even this piece of philosophic ruthlessness
created no stir and aroused no contemporary protest. What did stir
contemporary feeling to its depths was another conclusion involved in
his classification: namely, “that philosophers who occupy themselves
with physics and metaphysics are on a higher plane than men who occupy
themselves with the Torah.”[131] Whoever knows in what esteem our
ancestors of that period held the study of the _Torah_ will not be
surprised that “many wise men and Rabbis” were driven to the conclusion
that “this chapter was not written by the Master, or if it was, it
should be suppressed, or, best of all, burnt.”[132]
Poor, simple men! They did not see that this chapter could not be either
suppressed or burnt except in company with all the other chapters of
Maimonides’ system, which led him inevitably to this extreme conclusion.
But there were other men in Israel who saw more clearly, and actually
condemned all the chapters to the fire. To them we shall return later.
III
The supremacy of Reason! Can we to-day, after the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, conceive how tremendous, how fundamental a
revolution the phrase implied in the time of Maimonides?
We all know that the outstanding characteristic of the human mind in the
Middle Ages was its negative attitude to human reason, its lack of faith
in the power of reason to direct man’s life and bring him to the goal of
real happiness. Reason was almost hated and despised as a dangerous
tempter and seducer: it led men away from the pursuit of truth and
goodness, and was to be eschewed by all who cared for their souls.
Fundamental questions about life and the universe had to receive
_super_-rational answers. The simpler and more reasonable the answer,
the more suspect and the less satisfactory it was; the stranger the
answer, the more violently opposed to sane reason, the more cordial was
its welcome and the more ready its acceptance. The famous _Credo quia
absurdum_ of one of the Church fathers was the cardinal rule of thought
for all cultured nations, Christian and Mohammedan alike. Nor had
Judaism escaped the sway of this principle. Not only the mass of the
people, but the leaders and teachers, generally speaking, believed in
the literal sense of the Scriptures and the Talmud, even where it was
plainly contrary to reason. The coarsest and crudest ideas about the
nature of the divine power and its relation to men, and about the soul
of man and its future in “the world to come”—ideas which reason cannot
tolerate for a moment—were almost universally held; and even those
learned in the Law staunchly maintained these ideas, because so they had
found it written in Bible or Talmud, and that which was written was
above reason, and no attention should be paid to that impudent scoffer.
It followed naturally from this fundamental point of view that the
important things in the sphere of morals were to know and to perform all
that was written. The function of reason was not to understand life and
the universe, but to understand what was written about life and the
universe. The thing best worth doing for a Jew was to ponder on the
written word and to work out its details, theoretically and practically,
to infinity.[133]