This grave evil required a remedy; the “perplexed” had to be satisfied that they could devote themselves peacefully to the acquisition of the Ideas, without being disturbed by the thought that in so doing they were rejecting the fundamental principles of the Law. This was the task which Maimonides set himself in his last book, the Guide for the Perplexed. The book is in a way his own confession of faith; it shows his perplexed pupils the method by which he has succeeded in escaping from his own perplexity. After what has been said above, we need not here deal with this book at length. The “true opinions” which it contains have already been explained in outline; the method by which these opinions are discovered in the Torah has been broadly indicated, and the details are not essential to our present purpose. It does not matter to us how Maimonides subordinated religion to reason; the important thing is that he did subordinate it. From this point of view we may put the whole teaching of the Guide in a single sentence. “Follow reason and reason only,” he tells the “perplexed,” “and explain religion in conformity with reason: for reason is the goal of mankind, and religion is only a means to the end.”
Had Maimonides written the Guide before he wrote the Mishneh Torah, he would certainly have been pronounced a heretic, and his book would have made no deep impression either in the orthodox camp or in that of the doubters. The orthodox would have turned their backs on it and have striven to blot out its memory, as they did with so many other books which they thought dangerous to their faith; and the doubters would not have accepted its views as a perfect doctrine, but would have regarded it as merely an attempt on the part of one of their fellow-doubters to escape from his perplexity, and an attempt which in many details had failed and could not give entire satisfaction.
But in fact the Guide was written after the Mishneh Torah, when Maimonides was already considered the greatest exponent of the Law, and enjoyed an unequalled reputation throughout the Diaspora. Hence even the Guide could not dethrone him from his eminence. Willingly or unwillingly, his contemporaries accepted this further gift at his hands. The believers stormed and raged among themselves, but did not dare to attack Maimonides openly so long as he lived. The doubters welcomed the book with open arms; they did not stop to test or criticise, but drank eagerly of the comforting draught for which their souls had been thirsting. It was not some sophist, but the greatest sage in Israel, the light of the Exile, who went before them like a pillar of fire to illumine their path. How could they but be satisfied with such a guide?
But things changed when Maimonides’ death freed the zealots from the restraint of fear. A fierce conflict broke out about him, and raged for a hundred years. The religious leaders, long accustomed to ban every book that did not suit their views, could not possess their souls in silence when they saw, for the first time in Jewish history, that revolutionary books like the Guide and the Book of Science were spread abroad without let or hindrance, and were more popular and more esteemed by the people at large than almost any of the other books which the teachers and sages of Israel had placed in the treasury of Judaism.[[148]] The details of this conflict are familiar to scholars, and it is not my intention here to write the history of that period. But it is worth pointing out that most of Maimonides’ opponents at that time did not recognise clearly the fundamental change which he had introduced into Judaism. No doubt they all felt that his teaching meant a complete revolution in the national outlook; but they did not all understand what was the pivotal issue of the revolution. For the most part they merely pointed to certain details in which they found heresy, such as the denial of resurrection, of hell and paradise, and so forth. Only a few of them understood that Maimonides’ teaching was revolutionary not because of his attitude on this or that particular question, but because he dethroned religion altogether from the supreme judgment-seat, and put reason in its place: because he made it his basic principle that “whenever a Scripture is contradicted by proof we do not accept the Scripture,” but explain it in accordance with reason.[[149]]
This emancipation of reason from its subordination to an external authority is the great and eternal achievement which has so endeared Maimonides to all those of our people who have striven after knowledge and the light. The theoretical system at which Maimonides worked so hard from his youth to the end of his life has long been swept away, together with the Arabic metaphysics on which it was based. But the practical consequence of that system—the emancipation of reason—remains, and has left its mark on the history of Jewish thought up to the present day. Every Jew who has left the old school and traversed the hard and bitter road that leads from blind faith to free reason must have met with Maimonides at the beginning of his journey, and must have found in him a source of strength and support for his first steps, which are the hardest and the most dangerous. This road was traversed not only by Mendelssohn, but also by Spinoza,[[150]] and before and after them by countless thinkers, many of whom won golden reputations within Judaism or outside it.
S. D. Luzzatto’s criticism of Maimonides, on the ground that his views on the nature of the soul led to the degradation of reason in Jewish thought, is superficial. Maimonides, according to him, “laid down what we must believe and what we must not believe,” whereas before his time there was no rigid dogma, “and there was no ban on opinions to prevent each thinker from believing what he thought true.”[[151]] Now this is not the place to show how far Luzzatto was from historical accuracy when he credited pre-Maimonidean Judaism with freedom of thought. To understand the true nature of that freedom we need only remember how Maimonides’ opponents—who were certainly faithful to the older Judaism—spoke and acted in the period of conflict. But as regards Maimonides himself, Luzzatto overlooks the fact that, while his psychological theory no doubt led him to regard certain opinions as obligatory, he placed the source of the obligation no longer in any external authority, but precisely in human reason. That being so, the obligation could not involve a ban on opinions. For as soon as other thinkers are persuaded that human reason does not make these particular opinions obligatory, they are bound, in conformity with Maimonides’ own system, to believe each what he thinks true, and not what Maimonides erroneously thought true. In other words: if we wish to judge Maimonides’ system from the point of view of its effects on Judaism, we must look not at the Thirteen Articles which he laid down as obligatory principles in accordance with that system, but at the one principle which underlies all others—that of the supremacy of reason. A philosopher who frees reason from authority in general must at the same time free it from his own authority; he cannot regard any view as obligatory except so long as it is made obligatory by reason. Imagine a man put in prison and given the key: can he be said to have lost his liberty?[[152]]
IV
Here ends what I wished to say about the supremacy of reason in Maimonides’ system; and here I might conclude this Essay. But I should like to add some remarks on another supremacy—on that of the national sentiment. In these days we cannot discuss the thought of one of our great men, even if there are seven hundred years between him and us, without wanting to know whether and to what extent his thought reveals traces of that sentiment which we now regard as the most vital element in the life of Judaism.
But this question really contains two different questions, which have to be answered differently so far as Maimonides is concerned. The first question is: Did Maimonides recognise the supremacy of the national sentiment in the spiritual life of his people, and allow it consciously and of set purpose an important place in the teaching of Judaism? The second is: Do we find traces of the supremacy of the national sentiment—as an unconscious and spontaneous instinct—in the mentality of Maimonides himself?[[153]]
The first question cannot be answered in the affirmative: the evidence is rather on the negative side. Had Maimonides recognised clearly the strength of the national sentiment as a force in Jewish life, and its importance as a factor in the development of Judaism, he would undoubtedly have used it, as Jehudah Halevi did, to explain the numerous features of Judaism which have their origin in the national sentiment. At any rate, he would not have endeavoured to invest those features with a universalistic character. For instance, in seeking reasons for the commandments he could easily have found that many of them have no purpose but to strengthen the feeling of national unity; and he would not have said of the Festivals that they “promote the good feeling that men should have to each other in their social and political relations.”[[154]] Nor would he have said, in dealing with the future redemption, that “the wise men and the prophets only longed for the days of the Messiah in order that they might be free to study the Torah and its wisdom, without any oppression or interference, and so might win eternal life.”[[155]] No doubt we do sometimes find in his Letters, and especially in those that were written to encourage his people in times of national trouble, feeling references to the fortunes and the mission of the Jewish people.[[156]] But despite these isolated and casual references, only one conclusion can be drawn from the general tenor of Maimonides’ teaching: that he did not recognise the value of the national element in Jewish life, and did not allow that element due weight in his exposition of Judaism.[[157]] On the other hand, various indications show that in Maimonides himself the national sentiment was, without his knowledge, a powerful force: so much so, that it sometimes actually drove him from the straight road of logic and reason, and entangled him—of all men—in contradictions which had no ground or justification in his theory. We shall always find in the psychology of even the most logical thinker, despite his efforts to give to reason the undivided empire of his thought, some remote corner to which its sway cannot extend; and we shall always find a rebel band of ideas, which reason cannot control, breaking out from that point of vantage to disturb the order of its realm. Of this truth Maimonides may serve as an example. It is particularly evident in regard to the dogmas of Judaism which he laid down, accompanied by a declaration that “if any man rejects one of these fundamental beliefs, he severs himself from the community and denies a principle of Judaism: he is called a heretic and an unbeliever, and it is right to hate him and to destroy him.”[[158]] As we have already seen, it is an inevitable consequence of Maimonides’ teaching that the dogmas of religion must be formulated clearly and made obligatory on the whole people. But in strict accordance with his system Maimonides ought to have included among the dogmas only those “true opinions” without which religion could not have been maintained or have fulfilled its function. And in fact all his dogmas are of that character, except only the two last—those which assert the coming of the Messiah and the resurrection. How, then, did he come to include these two?