IN PHILOSOPHY.
ALEXANDRIA, THE INTELLECTUAL METROPOLIS OF THE WORLD.--A PRODIGIOUS
STIMULUS GIVEN TO LEARNING.--THE SEPTUAGINT.--DEVELOPMENT
OF GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY INTO ARISTOTLIANISM.--THIS ENGRAFTED
ON JEWISH THEOLOGY.--OPPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY TO
ARISTOTLIANISM.--AVERROES.--MOSES MAIMONIDES.--OPPOSITION
UNSUCCESSFUL.
We must devote some little space and time to a review of the place the
Moors and the Jews held in philosophy during their stay in Spain from
the eighth to the fifteenth century. The purpose of this work makes
this review necessary. Not that we shall see any wonderful advance in
this department of learning, nor that we need show the glaring contrast
between the sophistical cobwebs of the cotemporaneous scholastics and
the rational researches of the Moorish and Jewish philosophers, but
that we may see what a debt of gratitude modern philosophy owes the
Jew and Moor, for taking up the thread of philosophical research where
Greek intelligence had been forced to leave it, and for carrying it
forward sufficiently for modern philosophy to build upon it, as a
superstructure, the theories and systems of to-day.
To fully understand their place in philosophy it is necessary for us
to retrace our steps in history some 2,000 years, and enter the city
of Alexandria. Here Alexander the Great had established his seat of
government. It became the intellectual metropolis of the world. Thither
the conqueror brought the wealth and learning of the globe. Into that
city the people streamed, or were brought as prisoners, from the
remotest corners of the known world, from the Danube to the Nile, and
from the Nile to the Ganges. For the first time in the world's history,
there could be found in one city, men who could speak learnedly of
the Borean blasts of the countries beyond the Black Sea, and of the
simoons of the Oriental deserts, of pyramids and obelisks and sphinxes
and hieroglyphics, of the Persian and Assyrian and Babylonian wonders,
of the Chaldean astronomers, of hanging gardens, aqueducts, hydraulic
machinery, tunnels under the river-bed, or of the Assyrian method of
printing, on plastic clay. For the first time in the world's history
seekers after knowledge could listen, in the Serapion of Alexandria, to
learned discussions between Jewish monotheists and Persian dualists and
Grecian polytheists and Egyptian mysticists and Indian Brahmanists and
Buddhists, and between the Ionics and Pythagoreans, and Eleatics and
the Atomists and Anaxagoreans, and the Socratists, and Platonists and
Aristotelians and Stoics and Epicureans and Neo-Platonists. No age or
city had ever furnished better opportunities for intellectual pursuits.
No city could ever before this, point to kings more enthusiastic
for the promotion of learning than were her Ptolemys, nor could all
antiquity boast of a library equal to hers, or of a museum as justly
celebrated for its botanical gardens and astronomical observatories and
anatomical college and chemical laboratory.
A prodigious stimulus was thus given to learning, and it has left its
impress upon the world's civilization. Here Euclid wrote the theorems
which are still studied by the college students of to day. Here
Archimedes studied mathematics under Conon. Here Eratosthones made
astronomy a science. Here Ptolemy wrote his "Syntaxes." Here Ctesibius
and Hero invented the steam engine. Here true philosophy flourished,
and for the first time, too, in the world's history. The people of the
Orient had dabbled in speculative thought before this, but the results
achieved showed that the Oriental mind is not adapted to abstract
reasoning. The luxurious habits and voluptuous surroundings and
tropical climate of the Orient tend more toward poetry, music and love
and languor than toward psychical contemplations. The awe-awakening
phenomena of nature, which confront the Oriental everywhere, naturally
lead him to accept as _a priori_ principles what the philosophers
of the Occident make the subject of endless, and for the most part,
incomprehensible and unsatisfactory systems of philosophy.
It is for this reason that the great religions of the world sprang
from Oriental soil, while the great philosophical systems took roots
in Western lands. Yet, up to this period, not even the West, with all
its labors, had sounded the depths of true philosophy. The entire
pre-Socratic philosophy wasted its energies upon the futile effort
to find some principle for the explanation of nature, which to the
Hebrew mind had been solved thousands of years before in the opening
verse of the Bible. One thought it to be _water_; another, _air_; and
a third an original _chaotic matter_. The Pythagoreans declared that
_number_ is the essence of all things, and the Eleatics believed they
were nearer the truth by negating all division in space and time. The
Atomists endowed each atom with gravity and motion, and accounted thus
for the origin of all physical existences and states. Socrates and
Plato both came much nearer to the solution of the problem; the former
postulated self-knowledge as the starting point of all philosophy,
and the latter combined all preceding systems into one scheme, with
an _infinitely wise and just and powerful spirit_ as its guiding
principle, but idealistically only. The additional realistic view of
things had not yet been reached, and could not be reached, for that
depends upon universal and exact and scientific knowledge, which
prior to the great age of Alexandrian learning, to which all ages and
climes and nations contributed their experiences and observation and
knowledge, had never yet existed. Aristotle, the teacher of Alexander,
and the friend of Ptolemy, thus found through Alexandrian influence,
opportunities for philosophical reasoning, which necessarily gave his
system an almost inestimable advantage over his predecessors. From the
study of particulars he rose to a knowledge of universals, advancing
to them by induction. This inductive method was grounded upon facts of
his own experience and observation, as well as those of others, whom
the intellectual metropolis had sent into Greece. He became the first
and best absolute empiricist. His system acquired an encyclopedic
character. He became the father of logic, natural history, empirical
psychology and the science of rights. Aristotelian philosophy became
the intellectual corner stone on which the Museum rested, and is
to-day, through Jewish and Moorish influence, as we shall presently
see, the corner stone of modern philosophy.
The Jewish community of Alexandria was very large. When Alexander
founded this city and gave it his name, he wished to secure for it
permanent success, and so he brought them thither by the thousands.
Ptolemy brought 100,000 more, after his siege of Jerusalem, and
Philadelphus, his successor, redeemed from slavery 198,000 Jews,
"paying their Egyptian owners a just money equivalent for each."
Alexander's expectations were realized; the city of his name led the
world in commerce and intellect. With an enthusiasm almost bordering
on passion the Hebrews devoted themselves to philosophy, especially to
Aristotelian philosophy. They ingrafted it upon their own theology and
philosophic speculations, some going even so far as to believe that
Aristotle must have been a Jew himself.
Henceforth Aristotelian philosophy is Jewish philosophy. The occasional
acceptance of the Neo-Platonic mysticism, theosophy and theurgy, was
unable to obliterate it.
During seven centuries learning flourished in the city of Alexandria,
zealously fostered by native Egyptian, Greek and Jew. A new power
arose--Christianity. At once it recognized in Aristotelian philosophy
an inimical foe, and began its work of suppressing rational research
and free thought. The rest we need not relate. We know what happens
when Christianity institutes inquisitors of faith instead of inquirers
of learning. We know what happens when Christianity uses power instead
of argument. That day, when the beautiful and young Hypatia, perhaps,
the most accomplished woman that has ever lived, the popular lecturer
of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy at the Museum, where her
lecture room was crowded daily, with the wealth and intellect of
Alexandria; that day, when this most noble of women was assaulted by
Bishop Cyril's fanatical and blood-thirsty monks, when she was dragged
by the followers of the "religion of love," from her chariot, stripped
naked in the street, pulled into the church, where she was cut to
pieces--where her flesh was scraped from the bones with a shell and the
remnants cast into fire; that day marked the extinction of Alexandrian
learning--it marked the extinction of Athenian learning. Science, so
successful, died the death of strangulation, and the expounders of
Aristotelian philosophy were silenced, and their literature condemned
to the pyre.
But Aristotelian philosophy was not yet dead. The Jews still lived,
and with them the works of Aristotle. They had succeeded in concealing
translations and original copies of his works from the fanatical
champions of ignorance. They had absorbed it into their system of
thought. They had used it in their commentaries upon their Scriptures.
They had saturated their very prayers with it. They had sought to
reconcile Jewish theology with refined heathen philosophy. Whither they
wandered, it wandered, and where they were permitted to study there
also was Aristotelian philosophy studied. What they had long wished
was granted them at last. They became the restorers of philosophy in
Europe. Moorish and Spanish prosperity afforded them the opportunities
for an uninterrupted study and development of the Aristotelian
philosophy. Soon the Moor shared their enthusiasm. The caliphs sent
special messengers to secure whatever of Aristotelian philosophy had
escaped the mob of "St. Cyril."[32]
[32] Cyril has the title of "St." now; when first we met him,
instigating his monks to kill the learned Hypatia, he was only
Bishop Cyril. That noble and humane act together with his
commendable zeal for throttling science and rational research
has won for him the honored title of "St."
Many were they, both Jews and Moors, who devoted themselves to this
philosophy, and vast the systems they unfolded. The wonderful advance
they had made in the sciences, and in the other branches of learning,
enabled them to enlarge upon the teachings of Aristotle. New facts
and new experiences and new observations led them to new and advanced
inductions. However great the temptations be to enter into some
analysis of their philosophical system, we must not yield to them; that
is not the object of this review. Our design is to show what influence
Moorish and Jewish learning exercised upon European civilization. We
have seen its impress upon the sciences and literatures of Europe, and
its impress is visible still on modern philosophy.[33] From all parts
of the world persons having a taste for philosophy found their way
to the Moorish and Jewish sages of Spain. Gerbet himself, later Pope
Sylvester II., had repaired to Cordova and Seville to hear Moorish and
Jewish philosophers expound the mysteries of wisdom and philosophy,
and so illustrious an example soon became the raging fashion among
European scholars. As if desirous of dividing the honors equally,
both the Moors and the Jews sent at the same time, a representative
champion into the philosophical arena who, by their united labors, not
only demolished scholasticism but also laid the permanent foundation
of modern philosophy. The representative philosopher of the Moors was
the great Averroes (Ibn Roshd, 1149-1198) whose name still occupies
an honored place upon the pages of history of philosophy, and whose
system, bearing his name--Averroism--is still recognized among
the philosophical systems of the world. The representative Jewish
philosopher was the great Moses Maimonides, (1135-1204) the greatest
Jewish philosopher the Jews have ever produced, and one of the greatest
the world has seen to this day, whose philosophical system, unfolded in
his "More Nebuchim," ("Guide for the Perplexed") still remains truly,
grandly immortal.
[33] As a careful study of Eisler's "Vorlesungen Ueber
Juedische Philosophie des Mittelalters," and Renan's "Averroes
et Averoisme," and Joel's "Verhaltniss Albert des Grosseu zu
Moses Maimonides," and "Spinoza's Theolgo-Politischer Traktat
auf Seine Quellen's Geprueft," and Haarbruecker's translation
of Schahrastani's "Religions Partheien Philosophen-Schulen,"
will readily prove.
For several centuries the Moorish and Jewish philosophy was the delight
of such men in whom Spanish learning kindled a desire for deeper
research and loftier thought than Europe had hitherto offered. Even
many of the schoolmen shared this enthusiasm. But this very enthusiasm
was the deathblow to scholasticism. Once imbued with Moorish and Jewish
empirical philosophy and inductive reasoning, the rational mind could
no longer pursue the sophistic teachings which the church held up as
the divine wisdom. That philosophy shook the old faith to its very
root, produced new predispositions and prepared the way for the coming
change. It weaned men from simply believing the church's "say-so" and
taught them to think, and when men began to think scholasticism ceased,
and the Reformation began, and with it modern thought. No longer would
the rational mind believe that legends and miracles can decide such
questions as are the starting point of philosophic thought. No longer
would they endure the preposterous teaching--the product of ignorance
and audacity--that the faith of the church is absolute truth; that
faith is greater than knowledge; that a thing may be theologically true
even though it be philosophically false. No longer would they disgrace
themselves with continuing to waste time and parchment with discussions
and treatises such as these, to which the schoolmen of several
centuries devoted hundreds of volumes: "How many choirs of angels are
there in heaven, how do they sit and upon what instrument do they
play?" "To what temperature does the heat rise in hell?" "Wherein lies
the difference between 'consubstantiatio and transubstantiato'?" "What
kind of feathers had the angel Gabriel in his wings? What kind of a
swallow it was that caused Tobias' blindness? Whether Pilate washed his
hands with soap before he condemned Jesus? Whether it was an adagio or
allegro which David played before Saul? What sort of salve it was which
Mary brought to the Lord? Whether the coat for which the soldiers cast
lots constituted the entire raiment of the Redeemer? Whether the valley
of Jehosophat is large enough for the world's judgment day?" and so on
_ad nauseam_. A schism arose. The indignation of St. Thomas Aquinas,
the leader of the Dominicans, knew no bounds when he beheld Christians
drinking in, in full draughts, Moorish and Jewish philosophy. The
Franciscans opposed him and every effort of his to suppress their
writings. The conflict lasted till 1512, when the Lateran council
condemned "the abettors of these detestable doctrines to be held as
heretics and infidels," and the Dominicans, armed with the weapons of
the Inquisition, were not slow to silence Averoism in Europe.
But though silenced it lived in Jewish philosophy, and that, as little
as its Talmud and Bible no power on earth has ever been strong enough
to silence. Though silenced, with the aid of the Jews it flashed forth
to all parts of Europe, where it found its way as readily into the
"Opus Majus" of Roger Bacon as into the curriculum of studies of the
University of Padua. Though silenced, it permeated the Renaissance.
Though silenced, it formed the groundwork of Spinoza's system. Though
silenced, with the aid of the Jewish philosophers, who laughed the
Inquisition to scorn, it was studied everywhere, and everywhere it
assumed those gigantic proportions destined to illumine the intellect
of Europe. Though silenced, with the aid of the Jewish philosophy, it
ushered in modern philosophy and the civilization of to-day.