The purpose of the soul's coming into this world is in order that she may purify the two lower souls; also that she may know the value of her own world in comparison with this one, and in grieving for having left it may observe God's commandments, and thus achieve her return to her own world.
In the matter of returning to their own world after separation from the body, souls are graded according to the measure of their knowledge and the value of their conduct. These two conditions, ethical and spiritual or intellectual, are requisite of fulfilment before the soul can regain its original home. The soul on leaving this world is like a clean, white garment soaked in water. If the water is clean, it is easy to dry the garment, and it becomes even cleaner than it was before. But if the water is dirty, no amount of drying will make the garment clean.
Those souls which instead of elevating the two lower souls, vegetative and animal, were misled by them, will perish with the latter. Between the two extremes of perfection and wickedness there are intermediate stages, and the souls are treated accordingly. Those of the proud will rise in the air and flying hither and thither will not find a resting place. Those which have knowledge, but no good deeds, will rise to the sphere of the ether, but will be prevented from rising higher by the weight of their evil deeds, and the pure angels will rain down upon them arrows of fire, thus causing them to return below in shame and disgrace. The souls of the dishonest will be driven from place to place without finding any rest. Other bad souls will be punished in various ways. Those souls which have good deeds but no knowledge will be placed in the terrestrial paradise until their souls recall the knowledge they had in their original state, and they will then return to the Garden of Eden among the angels.[147]
CHAPTER VIII
ABRAHAM BAR HIYYA
Abraham bar Hiyya, the Prince, as he is called, lived in Spain in the first half of the twelfth century. He also seems to have stayed some time in southern France, though we do not know when or how long. His greatest merit lies not in his philosophical achievement which, if we may judge from the only work of a philosophical character that has come down to us, is not very great. He is best known as a writer on mathematics, astronomy and the calendar; though there, too, his most important service lay not so much in the original ideas he propounded, as in the fact that he was among the first, if not the first, to introduce the scientific thought current in the Orient and in Moorish Spain into Christian Europe, and especially among the Jews of France and Germany, who devoted all their energies to the Rabbinical literature, and to whom the Arabic works of their Spanish brethren were a sealed book.
So we find Abraham bar Hiyya, or Abraham Savasorda (a corruption of the Arabic title Sahib al-Shorta), associated with Plato of Tivoli in the translation into Latin of Arabic scientific works. And he himself wrote a number of books on mathematics and astronomy in Hebrew at the request of his friends in France who could not read Arabic. Abraham bar Hiyya is the first of the writers we have treated so far who composed a scientific work in the Hebrew language. All the others, with the exception of Abraham ibn Ezra, wrote in Arabic, as they continued to do until and including Maimonides.
The only one of his extant works which is philosophical in content is the small treatise "Hegyon ha-Nefesh," Meditation of the Soul.[148] It is a popular work, written with a practical purpose, ethical and homiletic in tone and style. The idea of repentance plays an important rôle in the book, and what theoretical philosophy finds place therein is introduced merely as a background and basis for the ethical and religious considerations which follow. It may be called a miniature "Duties of the Hearts." As in all homiletical compositions in Jewish literature, exegesis of Biblical passages takes up a good deal of the discussions, and for the history of the philosophic movement in mediæval Judaism the methods of reading metaphysical and ethical ideas into the Bible are quite as important as these ideas themselves.
The general philosophical standpoint of Abraham bar Hiyya may be characterized as an uncertain Neo-Platonism, or a combination of fundamental Aristotelian ideas with a Neo-Platonic coloring. Thus matter and form are the fundamental principles of the world. They existed potentially apart in the wisdom of God before they were combined and thus realized in actuality.[149] Time being a measure of motion, came into being together with the motion which followed upon this combination. Hence neither the world nor time is eternal. This is Platonic, not Aristotelian, who believes in the eternity of motion as well as of time. Abraham bar Hiyya also speaks of the purest form as light and as looking at and illuminating the form inferior to it and thus giving rise to the heavens, minerals and plants.[150] This is all Neo-Platonic. And yet the most distinctive doctrine of Plotinus and the later Neo-Platonists among the Arabs, the series of emanating hypostases, Intellect, Universal Soul, Nature, Matter, and so on, is wanting in the "Hegyon ha-Nefesh."[151] Form is the highest thing he knows outside of God; and the purest form, which is too exalted to combine with matter, embraces angels, seraphim, souls, and all forms related to the upper world.[152] With the exception of the names angel, seraphim, souls, this is good Aristotelian doctrine, who also believes in the movers of the spheres and the active intellect in man as being pure forms.