I study the Cabbalah, and become at last a Physician.
Cabbalah,—to treat of this divine science somewhat more in detail,—means, in the wider sense of the term, tradition; and it comprehends, not only the occult sciences which may not be publicly taught, but also the method of deducing new laws from the laws that are given in the Holy Scriptures, as also some fundamental laws which are said to have been delivered orally to Moses on Mount Sinai. In the narrower sense of the term, however, Cabbalah means only the tradition of occult sciences. This is divided into theoretical and practical Cabbalah. The former comprehends the doctrines of God, of His attributes which are expressed by means of His manifold names, of the origin of the world through a gradual limitation of His infinite perfection, and of the relation of all things to His supreme essence. The latter is the doctrine which teaches how to work upon nature at pleasure by means of those manifold names of God, which represent various modes of working upon, and relations to, natural objects. These sacred names are regarded, not as merely arbitrary, but as natural signs, so that all that is done with these signs must have an influence on the object which they represent.
Originally the Cabbalah was nothing but psychology, physics, morals, politics, and such sciences, represented by means of symbols and hieroglyphs in fables and allegories, the occult meaning of which was disclosed only to those who were competent to understand it. By and by, however, perhaps as the result of many revolutions, this occult meaning was lost, and the signs were taken for the things signified. But as it was easy to perceive that these signs necessarily had meant something, it was left to the imagination to invent an occult meaning which had long been lost. The remotest analogies between signs and things were seized, till at last the Cabbalah degenerated into an art of madness according to method, or a systematic science resting on conceits. The big promise of its design, to work effects on nature at pleasure, the lofty strain and the pomp with which it announces itself, have naturally an extraordinary influence on minds of the visionary type, that are unenlightened by the sciences and especially by a thorough philosophy.
The principal work for the study of the Cabbalah is the Zohar, which is written in a very lofty style in the Syrian language. All other Cabbalistic writings are to be regarded as merely commentaries on this, or extracts from it.
There are two main systems of the Cabbalah,—the system of Rabbi Moses Kordovero, and that of Rabbi Isaac Luria.[27] The former is more real, that is, it approximates more closely to reason. The latter, on the other hand, is more formal, that is, it is completer in the structure of its system. The modern Cabbalists prefer the latter, because they hold that only to be genuine Cabbalah, in which there is no rational meaning. The principal work of Rabbi Moses Kordovero is the Pardes (Paradise). Of Rabbi Isaac Luria himself we have some disconnected writings; but his pupil, Rabbi Chajim Vitall, wrote a large work under the title, Ez Chajim (The Tree of Life), in which the whole system of his master is contained. This work is held by the Jews to be so sacred, that they do not allow it to be committed to print. Naturally, I had more taste for the Cabbalah of Rabbi Moses than for that of Rabbi Isaac, but durst not give utterance to my opinion on this point.
After this digression on the Cabbalah in general, I return to my story. I learned that the under-rabbi or preacher of the place was an adept in the Cabbalah; and therefore, to attain my object, I made his acquaintance. I took my seat beside him in the synagogue, and as I observed once that after prayer he always read from a small book, and then put it past carefully in its place, I became very curious to know what sort of book this was. Accordingly, after the preacher had gone home, I went and took the book from the place where he had put it; and when I found that it was a Cabbalistic work, I went with it and hid myself in a corner of the synagogue, till all the people had gone out and the door was locked. I then crept from my hiding-place, and, without a thought about eating or drinking the whole day long, read the fascinating book till the doorkeeper came and opened the synagogue again in the evening.
Shaarei Kedushah, or The Gates of Righteousness, was the title of this book; and, leaving out of account what was visionary and exaggerated, it contained the principal doctrines of psychology. I did with it therefore as the Talmudists say Rabbi Meïr acted, who had a heretic for his teacher, "He found a pomegranate; he ate the fruit and threw the peel away."[28]
In two or three days I had in this way finished the book; but instead of satisfying my curiosity, it only excited it the more. I wished to read more books of the same sort. But as I was too bashful to confess this to the preacher, I resolved to write him a letter, in which I expressed my irresistible longing for this sacred science, and therefore entreated him earnestly to assist me with books. I received from him a very favourable answer. He praised my zeal for the sacred science, and assured me that this zeal, amid so little encouragement, was an obvious sign that my soul was derived from Olam Aziloth (the world of the immediate divine influence), while the souls of mere Talmudists take their origin from Olam Jezirah (the world of the creation). He promised, therefore, to assist me with books as far as lay in his power. But as he himself was occupied mainly with this science, and required to have such books constantly at hand, he could not lend them to me, but gave me permission to study them in his house at my pleasure.
Who was gladder than I! I accepted the offer of the preacher with gratitude, scarcely ever left his house, and sat day and night over the Cabbalistic books. Two representations especially gave me the greatest trouble. One was the Tree, or the representation of the divine emanations in their manifold and intricate complexities. The other was God's Beard, in which the hairs are divided into numerous classes with something peculiar to each, and every hair is a separate channel of divine grace. With all my efforts I could not find in these representations any rational meaning.
My prolonged visits however were extremely inconvenient to the preacher. He had, a short time before, married a pretty young wife; and as his modest little house consisted of a single apartment, which was at once parlour, study, and bedroom, and as I sat in it at times reading the whole night, it happened not infrequently that my elevation above the sphere of sense came into collision with his sensibility. Consequently, he hit upon a good plan for getting rid of the incipient Cabbalist. He said to me one day, "I observe that it necessarily puts you to a great deal of inconvenience to spend your time constantly away from home for the sake of these books. You may take them home with you one by one if you please, and thus study them at your convenience."
To me nothing could be more welcome. I took home one book after another, and studied them till I believed that I had mastered the whole of the Cabbalah. I contented myself not merely with the knowledge of its principles and manifold systems, but sought also to make a proper use of these. There was not a passage to be met with in the Holy Scriptures or in the Talmud, the occult meaning of which I could not have unfolded, according to Cabbalistic principles, with the greatest readiness.
The book entitled Shaarei Orah[29] came to be of very good service here. In this book are enumerated the manifold names of the ten Sephiroth, which form the principal subject of the Talmud, so that a hundred or more names are given to each. In every word of a verse in the Bible, or of a passage in the Talmud, I found therefore the name of some Sephirah. But as I knew the attribute of every Sephirah, and its relation to the rest, I could easily bring out of the combination of names their conjoint effect.
To illustrate this by a brief example, I found in the book just mentioned, that the name Jehovah represents the six highest Sephiroth (not including the first three), or the person of the Godhead generis masculini, while the word Koh means the Shechinah or the person of the Godhead generis feminini, and the word amar denotes sexual union. The words, "Koh amar Jehova,"[30] therefore, I explained in the following way, "Jehovah unites with the Shechinah," and this is high Cabbalism. Accordingly, when I read this passage in the Bible, I thought nothing else, but that, when I uttered these words, and thought their occult meaning, an actual union of these divine spouses took place, from which the whole world had to expect a blessing. Who can restrain the excesses of imagination, when it is not guided by reason?
With the Cabbalah Maasith, or the practical Cabbalah, I did not succeed so well as with the theoretical. The preacher boasted, not publicly indeed, but to everybody in private, that he was master of this also. Especially he professed roeh veeno nireh (to see everything, but not to be seen by others), that is, to be able to make himself invisible.
About this trick I was specially anxious, in order that I might practise some wanton jokes on my comrades. More particularly I formed a plan for keeping my ill-tempered mother-in-law in check by this means. I pretended that my object was merely to do good, and guard against evil. The preacher consented, but said at the same time, that on my part certain preparations were required. Three days in succession I was to feast, and every day to say some Ichudim. These are Cabbalistic forms of prayer, whose occult meaning aims at producing in the intellectual world sexual unions, through means of which certain results are to be brought about in the physical.
I did everything with pleasure, made the conjuration which he had taught me, and believed with all confidence that I was now invisible. At once I hurried to the Beth Hamidrash, the Jewish academy, went up to one of my comrades, and gave him a vigorous box on the ear. He however was no coward, and returned the blow with interest. I started back in astonishment; I could not understand how he had been able to discover me, as I had observed with the utmost accuracy the instructions of the preacher. Still I thought I might, perhaps, unwittingly and unintentionally have neglected something. I resolved, therefore, to undertake the operation anew. This time, however, I was not going to venture on the test of a box on the ear; I went into the academy merely to watch my comrades as a spectator. As soon as I entered, however, one of them came up to me, and showed me a difficult passage in the Talmud, which he wished me to explain. I stood utterly confounded, and disconsolate over the failure of my hopes.
Thereupon I went to the preacher, and informed him of my unsuccessful attempt. Without blushing, he replied quite boldly, "If you have observed all my instructions, I cannot explain this otherwise than by supposing that you are unfit for being thus divested of the visibility of your body." With great grief, therefore, I was obliged to give up entirely the hope of making myself invisible.
This disappointed hope was followed by a new delusion. In the preface to the Book of Raphael, which the angel of that name is said to have delivered to our first father Adam at his banishment from paradise, I found the promise, that whoever keeps the book in his house is thereby insured against fire. It was not long, however, before a conflagration broke out in the neighbourhood, when the fire seized my house too, and the angel Raphael himself had to go up into heaven in this chariot of fire.
Unsatisfied with the literary knowledge of this science, I sought to penetrate into its spirit; and as I perceived that the whole science, if it is to deserve this name, can contain nothing but the secrets of nature concealed in fables and allegories, I laboured to find out these secrets, and thereby to raise my merely literary knowledge to a rational knowledge. This, however, I could accomplish only in a very imperfect manner at the time, because I had yet very few ideas of the sciences in general. Still, by independent reflection I hit upon many applications of this kind. Thus, for example, I explained at once the first instance with which the Cabbalists commonly begin their science.
It is this. Before the world was created, the divine being occupied the whole of infinite space alone. But God wished to create a world, in order that He might reveal those attributes of His nature which refer to other beings besides Himself. For this purpose He contracted Himself into the centre of His perfection, and issued into the space thereby left void ten concentric circles of light, out of which arose afterwards manifold figures (Parzophim) and gradations down to the present world of sense.
I could not in any way conceive that all this was to be taken in the common sense of the words, as nearly all Cabbalists represent it. As little could I conceive that, before the world had been created, a time had past, as I knew from my Moreh Nebhochim, that time is a modification of the world, and consequently cannot be thought without it. Moreover, I could not conceive that God occupies a space, even though it be infinite; or that He, an infinitely perfect being, should contract Himself, like a thing of circular form, into a centre.
Accordingly I sought to explain all this in the following way. God is prior to the world, not in time, but in His necessary being as the condition of the world. All things besides God must depend on Him as their cause, in regard to their essence as well as their existence. The creation of the world, therefore, could not be thought as a bringing forth out of nothing, nor as a formation of something independent on God, but only as a bringing forth out of Himself. And as beings are of different grades of perfection, we must assume for their explanation different grades of limitation of the divine being. But since this limitation must be thought as extending from the infinite being down to matter, we represent the beginning of the limitation in a figure as a centre (the lowest point) of the Infinite.
In fact, the Cabbalah is nothing but an expanded Spinozism, in which not only is the origin of the world explained by the limitation of the divine being, but also the origin of every kind of being, and its relation to the rest, are derived from a separate attribute of God. God, as the ultimate subject and the ultimate cause of all beings, is called Ensoph (the Infinite, of which, considered in itself, nothing can be predicated). But in relation to the infinite number of beings, positive attributes are ascribed to Him; these are reduced by the Cabbalists to ten, which are called the ten Sephiroth.
In the book, Pardes, by Rabbi Moses Kordovero, the question is discussed, whether the Sephiroth are to be taken for the Deity Himself or not. It is easy to be seen, however, that this question has no more difficulty in reference to the Deity, than in reference to any other being.
Under the ten circles I conceived the ten categories or predicaments of Aristotle, with which I had become acquainted in the Moreh Nebhochim,—the most universal predicates of things, without which nothing can be thought. The categories, in the strictest critical sense, are the logical forms, which relate not merely to a logical object, but to real objects in general, and without which these cannot be thought. They have their source, therefore, in the subject itself, but they become an object of consciousness only by reference to a real object. Consequently, they represent the ten Sephiroth, which belong, indeed, to the Ensoph in itself, but of which the reality is revealed only by their special relation to, and effect upon, objects in nature, and the number of which can be variously determined in various points of view.
But by this method of explanation I brought upon myself many an annoyance. For the Cabbalists maintain that the Cabbalah is not a human, but a divine, science; and that, consequently, it would be degradation of it, to explain its mysteries in accordance with nature and reason. The more reasonable, therefore, my explanations proved, the more were the Cabbalists irritated with me, inasmuch as they held that alone to be divine, which had no reasonable meaning. Accordingly I had to keep my explanations to myself. An entire work, that I wrote on the subject, I brought with me to Berlin, and preserve still as a monument of the struggle of the human mind after perfection, in spite of all the hindrances which are placed in its way.
Meanwhile this could not satisfy me. I wished to get an insight into the sciences, not as they are veiled in fables, but in their natural light. I had already, though very imperfectly, learned to read German; but where was I to obtain German books in Lithuania? Fortunately for me I learned that the chief rabbi of a neighbouring town, who in his youth had lived for a while in Germany, and learned the German language there, and made himself in some measure acquainted with the sciences, continued still, though in secret, to work at the sciences, and had a fair library of German books.
I resolved therefore to make a pilgrimage to S——, in order to see the chief rabbi, and beg of him a few scientific books. I was tolerably accustomed to such journeys, and had gone once thirty miles[31] on foot to see a Hebrew work of the tenth century on the Peripatetic philosophy. Without therefore troubling myself in the least about travelling expenses or means of conveyance, and without saying a word to my family on the subject, I set out upon the journey to this town in the middle of winter. As soon as I arrived at the place, I went to the chief rabbi, told him my desire, and begged him earnestly for assistance. He was not a little astonished; for, during the thirty one years which had passed since his return from Germany, not a single individual had ever made such a request. He promised to lend me some old German books. The most important among these were an old work on Optics, and Sturm's Physics.
I could not sufficiently express my gratitude to this excellent chief rabbi; I pocketed the few books, and returned home in rapture. After I had studied these books thoroughly, my eyes were all at once opened. I believed that I had found a key to all the secrets of nature, as I now knew the origin of storms, of dew, of rain, and such phenomena. I looked down with pride on all others, who did not yet know these things, laughed at their prejudices and superstitions, and proposed to clear up their ideas on these subjects and to enlighten their understanding.
But this did not always succeed. I laboured once to teach a Talmudist, that the earth is round, and that we have antipodes. He however made the objection, that these antipodes would necessarily fall off. I endeavoured to show that the falling of a body is not directed towards any fixed point in empty space, but towards the centre of the earth, and that the ideas of Over and Under represent merely the removal from and approach to this centre. It was of no avail; the Talmudist stood to his ground, that such an assertion was absurd.
On another occasion I went to take a walk with some of my friends. It chanced that a goat lay in the way. I gave the goat some blows with my stick, and my friends blamed me for my cruelty. "What is the cruelty?" I replied. "Do you believe that the goat feels a pain, when I beat it? You are greatly mistaken; the goat is a mere machine." This was the doctrine of Sturm as a disciple of Descartes.
My friends laughed heartily at this, and said, "But don't you hear that the goat cries, when you beat it?" "Yes," I replied, "of course it cries; but if you beat a drum, it cries too." They were amazed at my answer, and in a short time it went abroad over the whole town, that I had become mad, as I held that a goat is a drum.
From my generous friend, the chief rabbi, I received afterwards two medical works, Kulm's Anatomical Tables and Voit's Gaziopilatium. The latter is a large medical dictionary, containing, in a brief form, not only explanations from all departments of medicine, but also their manifold applications. In connection with every disease is given an explanation of its cause, its symptoms, and the method of its cure, along with even the ordinary prescriptions. This was for me a real treasure. I studied the book thoroughly, and believed myself to be master of the science of medicine, and a complete physician.
But I was not going to content myself with mere theory in this matter; I resolved to make regular application of it. I visited patients, determined all diseases according to their circumstances and symptoms, explained their causes, and gave also prescriptions for their cure. But in this practice things turned out very comically. If a patient told me some of the symptoms of his disease, I guessed from them the nature of the disease itself, and inferred the presence of the other symptoms. If the patient said that he could trace none of these, I stubbornly insisted on their being present all the same. The conversation therefore sometimes came to this:—
I. "You have headache also."
Patient. "No."
I. "But you must have headache."
As many symptoms are common to several diseases, I took not infrequently quid pro quo. Prescriptions I could never keep in my head, so that, when I prescribed anything, I was obliged to go home first and turn up my Gaziopilatium. At length I began even to make up drugs myself according to Voit's prescriptions. How this succeeded, may be imagined. It had at least this good result, that I saw something more was surely required for a practical physician than I understood at the time.