The object of God in creating man was to try the soul in order to purify it and make it like the angels. It is tried by being put in an earthy body, which grows and becomes larger by means of food. Hence God put into the soul the desire for food, and the desire for sexual union to perpetuate the species; and he made the reward for the satisfaction of these desires the pleasure which they give. He also appointed the "evil inclination" to incite to all these bodily pleasures. Now if this "evil inclination" gets the upper hand of the reason, the result is excess and ruin. Hence the need of general abstemiousness. And the ascetic class serve the purpose of reinforcing general temperance by their example.
But in the asceticism of the few there is also a limit beyond which one should not go. Here too the middle way is the best. Those extremists who leave the world entirely and live the life of a recluse in the desert, subsisting on grass and herbs, are farthest from the middle way, and the Bible does not approve of their mode of life, as we read in Isaiah (45, 18) "The God that formed the earth and made it; he that hath established it,—not in vain did he create it, he formed it to be inhabited." Those are much better who without leaving for the desert pass solitary lives in their homes, not associating with other people, and abstaining from superfluities of all kinds. But the best of all are those who adopt the mildest form of asceticism, who separate from the world inwardly while taking part in it outwardly, and assisting in the ordinary occupations of mankind. These are commended in the Bible. Witness the prayer of Jacob (Gen. 28, 20), the fasting of Moses forty days and forty nights on the mount, the fasting of Elijah, the laws of the Nazirite, Jonadab ben Rechab, Elisha, prescriptions of fasting on various occasions, and so on.[129]
The highest stage a man can reach spiritually is the love of God, and all that preceded has this as its aim. True love of God is that felt toward him for his own sake because of his greatness and exaltation, and not for any ulterior purpose.
The soul is a simple spiritual substance which inclines to that which is like it, and departs from what is material and corporeal. But when God put the soul into the body, he implanted in it the desire to maintain it, and it was thus affected by the feelings and desires which concern the health and growth of the body, thus becoming estranged from the spiritual.
In order that the soul shall attain to the true love of God, the reason must get the upper hand of the desires, all the topics treated in the preceding sections must be taken to heart and sincerely and conscientiously acted upon. Then the eyes of the soul will be opened, and it will be filled with the fear and the love of God.[130]
CHAPTER VII
PSEUDO-BAHYA
It had been known for a number of years that there was a manuscript treatise in Arabic on the soul, which was attributed on the title page to Bahya. In 1896 Isaac Broydé published a Hebrew translation of this work under the title "Torot ha-Nefesh," ("Reflections on the Soul").[131] The original Arabic was edited by Goldziher in 1907.[132] The Arabic title is "Maʿani al-Nafs," and should be translated "Concepts of the soul," or "Attributes of the soul."
There seems little doubt now that despite the ascription on the title page of the manuscript, the treatise is not a work of Bahya. It is very unlikely that anything written by so distinguished an author as Bahya, whose "Duties of the Hearts" was the most popular book in the middle ages, should have been so thoroughly forgotten as to have left no trace in Jewish literature. Bahya as well as the anonymous author refer, in the introductions to their respective works, to their sources or to their own previous writings. But there is no reference either in the "Duties of the Hearts" to the "Attributes of the Soul," or in the latter to the former. A still stronger argument against Bahya as the author of our treatise is that derived from the content of the work, which moves in a different circle of ideas from the "Duties of the Hearts." Our anonymous author is an outspoken Neo-Platonist. He believes in the doctrine of emanation, and arranges the created universe, spiritual and material, in a descending series of such emanations, ten in number. The Mutakallimun he opposes as being followers of the "Naturalists," who disagree with the philosophers as well as the Bible. Bahya, on the other hand, is a strict follower of the Kalam in his chapter on the "Unity," as we have seen (p. [86]), and the Neo-Platonic influence is very slight. There is no trace of a graded series of emanations in the "Duties of the Hearts."[133]