Man has three powers, we are told, which some call three souls. One is the power by which he grows and multiplies like the plants of the field. The second is that by which he moves from place to place. These two powers he has in common with the animal. The third is that by which he distinguishes between good and evil, between truth and falsehood, between a thing and its opposite, and by which he acquires wisdom and knowledge. This is the soul which distinguishes him from the other animals. If this soul prevails over the lower two powers, the man is called meritorious and perfect. If on the other hand the latter prevail over the soul, the man is accounted like a beast, and is called wicked and an evil doer. God gives merit to the animal soul for the sake of the rational soul if the former is obedient to the latter; and on the other hand imputes guilt to the rational soul and punishes her for the guilt of the animal soul because she did not succeed in overcoming the latter.[159]
The question of the relative superiority of the naturally good who feels no temptation to do wrong, and the temperamental person who has to sustain a constant struggle with his passions and desires in order to overcome them is decided by Abraham bar Hiyya in favor of the former on the ground that the latter is never free from evil thought, whereas the former is. And he quotes the Rabbis of the Talmud, according to whom the reward in the future world is not the same for the two types of men. He who must overcome temptation before he can subject his lower nature to his reason is rewarded in the next world in a manner bearing resemblance to the goods and pleasures of this world, and described as precious stones and tables of gold laden with good things to eat. On the other hand, the reward of the naturally perfect who is free from temptation is purely spiritual, and bears no earthly traces. These men are represented as "sitting under the Throne of Glory with their crowns on their heads and delighting in the splendor of the Shekinah."[160]
His theodicy offers nothing remarkable. He cites and opposes a solution frequently given in the middle ages of the problem of evil. This is based on the assumption that God cannot be the cause of evil. How then explain the presence of evil in the world? There is no analysis or classification or definition of what is meant by evil. Apparently it is physical evil which Abraham bar Hiyya has in mind. Why do some people suffer who do not seem to deserve it? is the aspect of the problem which interests him. One solution that is offered, he tells us, is that evil is not anything positive or substantial. It is something negative, absence of the good, as blindness is absence of vision; deafness, absence of hearing; nakedness, absence of clothing. Hence it has no cause. God produces the positive forms which are good, and determines them to stay a definite length of time. When this time comes to an end, the forms disappear and their negatives take their place automatically without the necessity of any cause.
Abraham bar Hiyya is opposed to this solution of the problem, though he gives us no philosophic reason for it. His arguments are Biblical. God is the cause of evil as well as good, and this is the meaning of the word "judgment" (Heb. Mishpat) that occurs so often in the Bible in connection with God's attributes. The same idea is expressed in Jeremiah (9, 23) "I am the Lord which exercise loving kindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth." Loving kindness refers to the creation of the world, which was an act of pure grace on the part of God. It was not a necessity. His purpose was purely to do kindness to his creatures and to show them his wisdom and power. Righteousness refers to the kindness of God, his charity so to speak, which every one needs when he dies and wishes to be admitted to the next world. For the majority of men have more guilt than merit. Judgment denotes the good and evil distributed in the world according to the law of justice. Thus he rewards the righteous in the next world, and makes them suffer sometimes in this world in order to try them and to double their ultimate reward. He punishes the wicked in this world for their evil deeds, and sometimes he gives them wealth and prosperity that they may have no claim or defence in the next world. Thus evil in this world is not always the result of misconduct which it punishes; it may be inflicted as a trial, as in the case of Job. Abraham bar Hiyya's solution is therefore that there is no reason why God should not be the author of physical evil, since everything is done in accordance with the law of justice.[161]
CHAPTER IX
JOSEPH IBN ZADDIK
Little is known of the life of Joseph ben Jacob ibn Zaddik. He lived in Cordova; he was appointed Dayyan, or Judge of the Jewish community of that city in 1138; and he died in 1149. He is praised as a Talmudic scholar by his countryman Moses ibn Ezra, and as a poet by Abraham ibn Daud and Harizi, though we have no Talmudic composition from his pen, and but few poems, whether liturgical or otherwise.[162] His fame rests on his philosophical work, and it is this phase of his career in which we are interested here. "Olam Katon" or "Microcosm" is the Hebrew name of the philosophical treatise which he wrote in Arabic, but which we no longer possess in the original, being indebted for our knowledge of it to a Hebrew translation of unknown authorship.[163] Maimonides knew Joseph ibn Zaddik favorably, but he was not familiar with the "Microcosm." In a letter to Samuel Ibn Tibbon, the translator of his "Guide of the Perplexed," Maimonides tells us that though he has not seen the "Olam Katon" of Ibn Zaddik, he knows that its tendency is the same as that of the Brothers of Purity (cf. above, p. [60]).[164] This signifies that its trend of thought is Neo-Platonic, which combines Aristotelian physics with Platonic and Plotinian metaphysics, ethics and psychology.
An examination of the book itself confirms Maimonides's judgment. In accordance with the trend of the times there is noticeable in Ibn Zaddik an increase of Aristotelian influence, though of a turbid kind; a decided decrease, if not a complete abandonment, of the ideas of the Kalam, and a strong saturation of Neo-Platonic doctrine and point of view. It was the fashion to set the Kalam over against the philosophers to the disadvantage of the former, as being deficient in logical knowledge and prejudiced by theological prepossessions. This is attested by the attitude towards the Mutakallimun of Judah Halevi, Maimonides, Averroes. And Ibn Zaddik forms no exception to the rule. The circumstance that it was most likely from Karaite writings, which found their way into Spain, that Ibn Zaddik gained his knowledge of Kalamistic ideas, was not exactly calculated to prepossess him, a Rabbanite, in their favor. And thus while we see him in the manner of Saadia and Bahya follow the good old method, credited by Maimonides to the Mutakallimun, of starting his metaphysics with proofs of the world's creation, and basing the existence of God, his unity, incorporeality and other attributes on the creation of the world as a foundation, he turns into an uncompromising opponent of these much despised apologetes when he comes to discuss the nature of God's attributes, of the divine will, and of the nature of evil. And in all these cases the target of his attack seems to be their Karaite representative Joseph al-Basir, whose acquaintance we made before (p. [48 ff.]).
He laid under contribution his predecessors and contemporaries, Saadia, Bahya, Pseudo-Bahya, Gabirol; and his sympathies clearly lay with the general point of view represented by the last, and his Mohammedan sources; though he was enough of an eclectic to refuse to follow Gabirol, or the Brethren of Purity and the other Neo-Platonic writings, in all the details of their doctrine; and there is evidence of an attempt on his part to tone down the extremes of Neo-Platonic tendency and create a kind of level in which Aristotelianism and Platonism meet by compromising. Thus he believes with Gabirol that all things corporeal as well as spiritual are composed of matter and form;[165] but when it comes to defining what the matter of spiritual things may be, he tells us that we may speak of the genus as the matter of the species—a doctrine which is not so Neo-Platonic after all. For we do not have to go beyond Aristotle to hear that in the definition of an object, which represents its intelligible (opposed to sensible) essence, the genus is like the matter, the difference like the form. Of the universal and prime matter underlying all created things outside of God, of which Gabirol says that it is the immediate emanation of God's essence and constitutes with universal form the Universal Intelligence, Ibn Zaddik knows nothing. Nor do we find any outspoken scheme of emanation, such as we see in Plotinus or with a slight modification in the cyclopœdia of the Brethren of Purity, or as it is presupposed in the "Fons Vitæ" of Gabirol. Ibn Zaddik does refer to the doctrine of the divine Will, which plays such an important rôle in the philosophy of Gabirol and of the Pseudo-Empedoclean writings, which are supposed to have been Gabirol's source.[166] But here, too, the negative side of Ibn Zaddik's doctrine is developed at length, while the positive side is barely alluded to in a hint. He takes pains to show the absurdity of the view that the divine will is a momentary entity created from time to time to make possible the coming into being of the things and processes of our world—a view held by the Mutakallimun as represented by their spokesman al-Basir, but when it comes to explaining his own view of the nature of the divine will, and whether it is identical with God or not, he suddenly becomes reticent, refers us to the writings of Empedocles, and intimates that the matter is involved in mystery, and it is not safe to talk about it too plainly and openly. Evidently Ibn Zaddik was not ready to go all the length of Gabirol's emanationism and Neo-Platonic mysticism.