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]]