A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy

by Isaac Husik

The Bible cannot help us to decide this question, for its expressions can be interpreted either way. Hillel then undertakes to adjudicate between the contending views by striking a compromise. He feels that he is contributing to the solution of an important problem by an original suggestion, which he says is to be found nowhere else expressed with such clearness and brevity.

Here again Hillel's Neo-Platonic tendencies are in evidence. For he assumes both a universal soul and a great number of individual souls emanating from it in a descending series. The objection that forms cannot come from other forms by way of generation and dissolution, Hillel says, is not valid, for no such process is here involved. Generation and dissolution is peculiar to the action of body upon body, which is by contact. A spiritual form acts upon other forms not through contact, because it is not limited by time or place. We know concerning the Intelligences that each comes from the one previous to it by way of emanation, and the same thing applies to the issue of many human souls from the one universal soul. After death the rational part of every soul remains; that part which every soul receives from the Active Intellect through the help of the possible or material intellect, and which becomes identified with the Active and separate Intellect. This is the part which receives reward and punishment, whereas the one universal soul from which they all emanate is a divine emanation, and is not rewarded or punished.[325]

We must now discuss further the nature of the three grades of intellect. For this it will be necessary to lay down three preliminary propositions.

1. There must be an intellect whose relation to the material intellect is the same as that of the object of sense perception is to the sense. This means that just as there must be a real and actual object to arouse the sense faculty to perceive, so there must be an actual intelligible object to stir the rational power to comprehend.

2. It follows from 1 that as the material sense has the power of perceiving the sensible object, so the material intellect has the power of perceiving this other intellect.

3. If it has this power, this must at some time be realized in actu. Therefore at some time the material intellect is identified with the other intellect, which is the Active Intellect.

We must now prove 1. This is done as follows: We all know that we are potentially intelligent, and it takes effort and pains and study to become actually intelligent. In fact the process of intellection has to pass several stages from sense perception through imagination. Now our intellect cannot make itself pass from potentiality to actuality. Hence there must be something else as agent producing this change; and this agent must be actually what it induces in us. Hence it is an active intellect.

The material intellect has certain aspects in common with the sense faculty, and in certain aspects it differs. It is similar to it in being receptive and not active. But the mode of receptivity is different in the two. As the intellect understands all forms, it cannot be a power residing in a body in the sense of extending through it and being divided with the division of the body, as we see in some of the powers of sense. This we can prove as follows:

1. If the intellect were receptive in the same manner as the senses, it would receive only a definite kind of form, as for example the sense of sight does not receive taste.

2. If the intellect were a power in body and had a special form, it could not receive that form, just as for example if the eye were colored, it could not perceive colors.