A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy

by Isaac Husik

As all existents are divided into substance and accident, the soul must be either the one or the other. Now an accident, according to Aristotle, is that which may be or not be without causing the being or destruction of the object in which it is. But the body cannot be a living body without the soul. Hence the soul is not an accident; it is therefore a substance. Substance may be corporeal or incorporeal. The soul cannot be a corporeal substance, for all body is divisible, and subject to motion and change, whereas the soul, as will be shown later, is not movable, not changeable and not divisible. It might seem that the soul is subject to motion, since it descends into the body and rises again when it leaves the body. But this is not so. Descent and ascent when thus applied to the soul are metaphorical. The union of soul and body is not a spatial relation. The upper world from which the soul comes is not corporeal, hence there is no such thing as place there, nor anything limited by space. Hence the coming of the soul from the spiritual world and its return thither are not motions at all. The relation of the soul to the body is as that of form to matter, as Aristotle says.

Granted that the soul's union with and separation from the body are not motions, is not the soul subject to motion while in the body? Hillel's answer is that it is not, and he proves his point in the prescribed fashion by making use of Aristotle's classification of motion into (1) genesis and (2) decay, (3) increase and (4) diminution, (5) qualitative change and (6) motion proper, or motion of translation. He then undertakes to show that the soul can have none of the kinds of motion here enumerated. The arguments offer nothing striking or interesting, and we can afford to omit them. It is worth while, however, to refer to his interpretation of emotion. The passage of the soul from joy to grief, from anger to favor, might seem to be a kind of motion. Hillel answers this objection by saying that these emotions do not pertain to the soul as such. Their primary cause is the state of mixture of the humors in the body, which affects certain corporeal powers in certain ways; and the soul shares in these affections only so far as it is united with the body. In its own nature the soul has no emotions.

We can also prove that the soul is not divisible. For a divisible thing must have parts. Now if the soul is divided or divisible, this means either that every part of the soul, no matter how small, has the same powers as the whole, or that the powers of the soul are the resultant of the union of the parts. The first alternative is impossible, for it leads us to the absurd conclusion that instead of one soul every person has an infinite number of souls, or at least a great number of souls. The second alternative implies that while the soul is not actually divided, since its powers are the summation of the parts, which form a unit, it is potentially divisible. But this signifies that at some time this potential divisibility will be realized (or potentiality would be vain and meaningless) and we are brought back to the absurdity of a multiplicity of souls in the human body.

Having shown that the soul is not movable, changeable or divisible, we are certain of its incorporeality, and we are ready to give a definition of the soul. Hillel accordingly defines the soul as "a stage of emanation, consisting of a formal substance, which subsists through its own perfection, and occupies the fourth place in the emanatory process, next to the Active Intellect. Its ultimate source is God himself, who is the ultimate perfection and the Good, and it emanates from him indirectly through the mediation of the separate Powers standing above it in the scale of emanation. The soul constitutes the first entelechy of a natural body."[323]

The above definition is interesting. It shows that Hillel did not clearly distinguish the Aristotelian standpoint from the Neo-Platonic, for in the definition just quoted, the two points of view are combined. That all mediæval Aristotelianism was tinged with Neo-Platonism, especially in the doctrine of the Active Intellect, is well known. But in Hillel's definition of the soul we have an extreme form of this peculiar combination, and it represents a step backward to the standpoint of Pseudo-Bahya and Ibn Zaddik. The work of Ibn Daud and Maimonides in the interest of a purer Aristotelianism seems not to have enlightened Hillel. The Neo-Platonic emanation theory is clearly enunciated in Hillel's definition. The soul stands fourth in the series. The order he has in mind is probably (1) God, (2) Separate Intelligences, (3) Active Intellect, (4) Soul. We know that Hillel was a student of the Neo-Platonic "Liber de Causis" (cf. above, p. [xx]), having translated some of it into Hebrew, and he might have imbibed his Neo-Platonism from that Proclean book.

Continuing the description of the soul in man, he says that the noblest part of matter, viz., the human body, is endowed with the rational soul, and becomes the subject of the powers of the latter. Thereby it becomes a man, i. e., a rational animal, distinguished from all other animals, and similar to the nature of the angels.

The Active Intellect causes its light to emanate upon the rational soul, thus bringing its powers out into actuality. The Active Intellect, which is one of the ten degrees of angels, is related to the rational power in man as the sun to the power of sight. The sun gives light, which changes the potentially seeing power into actually seeing, and the potentially visible object into the actually visible. Moreover, this same light enables the sight to see the sun itself, which is the cause of the actualization in the sight. So the Active Intellect gives something to the rational power which is related to it as light to the sight; and by means of this something the rational soul can see or understand the Active Intellect itself. Also the potentially intelligible objects become through this influence actually intelligible, and the man who was potentially intelligent becomes thereby actually intelligent.

Intellect ("sekel") in man is distinguished from wisdom ("hokmah"). By the former power is meant an immediate understanding of abstract principles. The latter is mediate understanding. Wisdom denotes speculation about universals through inference from particulars. Intellect applies directly to the universals and to their influence upon the particulars.[324]

Hillel next discusses the live topic of the day, made popular by Averroes, namely, whether there are in essence as many individual souls as there are human bodies, or, as Averroes thought, there is only one universal soul, and that its individualizations in different men are only passing incidents, due to the association of the universal soul with the human body, and disappear when the body dies. The "sages of the Gentiles," Hillel tells us, regard Averroes's notion as heretical, and leading besides to the absurd conclusion that the same soul is both rewarded and punished; a view which upsets all religion. Averroes employs a number of arguments to prove his point, among them being the following. If there are many souls, they are either all existing from eternity or they are created with the body. The first is impossible, for since the soul is a form of the body, we should have actually an infinite number of forms, and this would necessitate the actual existence of an infinite number of bodies also; else the existence of these souls for the purpose of joining the bodies would be in vain. But it is absurd to suppose that there has been from eternity an infinite number of bodies created like the number of souls, and yet they have not become real bodies with souls until now.

The second alternative is also impossible. For if there are many souls which came into being with the bodies, they either came from nothing or from something. From nothing is impossible, for nothing comes from nothing except by way of creation, which is a miracle; and we do not believe in miracles unless we have to. That they came from something is also impossible; for this something can be neither matter nor form. It cannot be matter, for form, the actual and superior, cannot come from the potential and inferior. It cannot be form, for then form would proceed from form by way of genesis and dissolution, which is not true. Matter is the cause of generation and dissolution, not form. We are thus forced to the conclusion that the soul is one and eternal, one in substance and number; and that it becomes many only per accidens, by virtue of the multiplicity of its receiving subjects, comparable to the light of the one sun, which divides into many rays.