But by the end of four years, viz. in 1095, Gazali had discontinued his work of teaching in Bagdad, attended though it had been with outward success. His mind, continually in a state of doubt, probably found no satisfaction in dogmatic prelections. He was alternately attracted and repelled by his own brilliant position, and he came to think that he could, and that he should, fight against the world and its wisdom in some other way, to more purpose. Ambition with him embraced far more than this world. Profounder still his musings became; and during an illness of his, the inner call presented itself to his soul. He had secretly to prepare for the work, by means of Sufi exercises,—perhaps even to assume the character of a religious and political reformer. At the very time that the Crusaders were equipping themselves in the West against Islam, Gazali was preparing himself to be the spiritual champion of the Muslim faith. His conversion was not of a violent character, like that of St. Augustine, but was rather to be compared to the experience of St. Jerome, who was summoned in a dream from his Ciceronian predilections to practical Christianity.
For ten years Gazali travelled here and there, dividing his time between pious exercises and literary work. In the first part of that period it may be conjectured that he wrote his principal theologico-ethical work, “The Revival of Religious Sciences”: towards the end he endeavoured to exercise influence as a reformer. His journeyings led him by way of Damascus and Jerusalem—before it was taken [[158]]by the Crusaders,—Alexandria, Mecca and Medina, back to his home.
After his return Gazali once more engaged in teaching for a short time in Nishabur; and he died in Tos, his native town, on the 19th of December, 1111. His closing years were chiefly devoted to pious contemplation and the study of the Traditions, which as a youth he could never remember. A beautifully complete and rounded life, in which the end comes back to the beginning!
3. Gazali passes in review the spiritual tendencies of his time. These are: the Dialectic of the Theologians; Sufi Mysticism; Pythagorean Popular Philosophy; and Neo-Platonic Aristotelianism. That which Dialectic desires to establish is also the object of his own faith; but its arguments appear to him rather weak, and many of its assertions on that account open to question. He feels most in sympathy with the Sufi Mysticism: to it he owes his dearest possession, viz., the establishment of his own faith in Personality,—so that he can postulate as an inner experience that which the Dialecticians attempt to derive by a process of reasoning. He thanks also the Popular Philosophy for the instruction it gives, particularly in Mathematics, which he fully recognizes as a science, together with its Astronomical deductions. He concedes the validity of its Physics, where that is not in conflict with the Faith. But Aristotelianism,—as it has been taught by Farabi and Ibn Sina, with as much subservience to authority as has been exhibited by the Theologians,—seems to him to be the enemy of Islam; and in the name of all the Muslim schools and tendencies of thought together, he feels bound to do battle with it, as from a [[159]]catholic standpoint. And in truth he does this with Aristotle’s own weapons,—those of Logic; for the axioms of thought which Logic lays down are, in his eyes, just as firmly established as the propositions of Mathematics. Fully alive to this, he starts from the Principle of Contradiction, to which, according to his contention, God himself submits. Of the Physico-Metaphysical doctrines of Philosophy then, he attacks three in particular: 1. That the world is eternal; 2. That God takes cognizance only of the Universal, and that consequently there is no special providence; 3. That the Soul alone is immortal, and therefore a Resurrection of the Body is not to be looked for. In the refutation of these doctrines Gazali is in many respects dependent on the Christian commentator on Aristotle, Johannes Philoponus, who also has written against the doctrine of the eternity of the world maintained by Proclus.
4. (1) The world, according to the philosophers, is a sphere of finite extent but of infinite duration. From all eternity, it proceeds from God, even as the effect is in existence at the same time with the cause. Gazali, on the contrary, is of opinion that it is not admissible to put such different constructions on the notions of Space and Time respectively; and he holds that the Divine Causality should be defined as free Creative Might.
First then as to Space and Time: we are as little able to imagine an outermost boundary of Space as a beginning or end of Time. He who believes in an endless Time, must, in consistency with that notion of his, assume also the existence of an infinite Space. To say that Space answers to the external sense, and Time on the other hand to the internal,—does not alter the case, for we [[160]]do not after all get rid of the Sensible. Just as Space bears a relation to Body, so does Time to the movement of Body. Both are merely relations of things, created in and with the things of the world, or rather relations between our conceptions, which God creates in us.
Still more important is that which Gazali advances about Causality. The Philosophers distinguish between an operation of God, of Spiritual Beings endowed with will, of the Soul, of Nature, of Chance and the like; but for Gazali, just as for the orthodox Kalam, there is really only one causality, that of the ‘Willing’ Being. He completely puts aside the causality of Nature, which is reducible without remainder into a relation of Time. We see one definite phenomenon (Cause) regularly succeeded by another definite phenomenon (Effect); but how the latter results from the former is left an enigma for us. Of operation in the objects of Nature we know nothing. Farther, any alteration is in itself inconceivable. That any one thing should become a different thing is incomprehensible to thought, which may just as well ask about facts as about causes. A thing either exists, or it does not exist; but not even Divine Omnipotence can transform one existing thing into another thing. It creates or else annihilates.
And yet it is a fact of our consciousness that we do effect something. If we ‘will’ anything, and possess the power to carry it out, we claim the result as our act. Action, proceeding from a free will, and conscious of the exertion of power, is the only causality of which we know; and we argue from this to the Divine Being. But by what right? The warrant for such a conclusion Gazali thinks that he finds in his own personal experience of the image [[161]]of God in his soul; while on the other hand he declines to credit Nature with the likeness to God which belongs to his own soul.
For him accordingly, God, in so far as he can be known from the world, is the Almighty Being, free in will and efficient in operation. No spatial limit may be set to his causative activity, which yet the philosophers do, when they grant only his influence in his first created work. But on the other hand He can limit his own work both in Space and Time, so that this finite world has only a finite duration. That God should call the world into existence out of nothing by an absolute act of creation—seems to the Philosophers to be absurd. They recognize only an exchange of Accidents or Forms in the one material, a passing of the actual from possibility to possibility. But does nothing new ever come then into being? Is not every apprehension of the senses,—asks Gazali,—and every spiritual perception, something entirely new, which either exists or else does not exist, but at whose coming into existence the contrary does not cease, and at whose vanishing from existence, the opposite does not make its appearance? Consider farther the numerous individual souls which, according to Ibn Sina’s system, must be in existence: have not these come into being, absolutely new?
There is no end to the putting of questions. The representative process wanders about in all directions and far; and thought leads us on ad infinitum. The chain of causation can nowhere be brought to an end, any more than Space or Time. In order then that there should be a definite, final Existence,—and in postulating this, Gazali [[162]]is at one with the Philosophers—, we need an Eternal Will as First Cause, different from everything else.