With Gabirol the scene of Jewish intellectual activity changes from the east to the west. Prior to the middle of the tenth
century the centre of Jewish learning was in Babylonia. The succession of Geonim in the Talmudical schools of Sura
and Pumbadita, and particularly the great fame of Saadia, made all the other Jewish communities of the world look to
Babylonia as the spiritual centre. They considered it a privilege to contribute to the support of the great eastern
academies and appealed to their spiritual heads in cases of doubt in religious matters. Some of this glory was reflected
also upon the neighboring countries under Mohammedan domination, Palestine, Egypt, and Kairuan or northern Africa to
the west of Egypt. Thus all the men, Rabbanites as well as Karaites, whom we treated so far lived and flourished in the
east in one of the four countries mentioned. Christian Europe was intellectually on a low level, and as far as scientific
studies were concerned, the Jews under Christian rule were no better than their temporal rulers.
But a new era dawned for Jewish literature with the accession to power of the Umayyad caliph Abd al Rahman III, as
head of Mohammedan Spain or Andalusia. He was a liberal man and a patron of learning. Hasdai ibn Shaprut, a cultured
and high-minded Jew, was his trusted adviser, and like his royal patron he protected and encouraged Jewish learning,
Talmudical as well as scientific. When Moses ben Enoch, a learned emissary from the Babylonian Academy, was
ransomed by the Jewish community of Cordova and made the head of a Talmudical school in that city, the beginning of
the end of Babylonian Jewish supremacy was at hand. Moses ben Enoch the Talmudist, Menahem ben Saruk, the
grammarian and lexicographer, and Dunash ben Labrat, the poet—all three under the distinguished patronage of Hasdai
ibn Shaprut—inaugurated the long line of Spanish Jewish worthies, which continued almost five centuries, constituting
the golden era of Jewish literature and making of Spain the intellectual centre of all Jewry.
Solomon ibn Gabirol was not merely the first Jewish philosopher in Spain, he was the first Spanish philosopher, that is,
he was the first philosophical writer in Andalusia. Ibn Badja, the first Mohammedan philosopher in Spain, was born at
least a half century after Gabirol. The birth of Gabirol is generally placed in 1021 and his death in 1058, though some
have put it as late as 1070.
The fate of Gabirol in the history of Jewish literature was a peculiar one. Highly celebrated as a synagogal poet in the
Sephardic as well as Ashkenazic community, his fame as a great philosopher was early overshadowed by his
successors, and his chief work, the "Fountain of Life," was in the course of time quite forgotten. The Arabic original was
lost and there was no Hebrew translation. The Tibbonides, Judah, Samuel and Moses, who translated everything worth
while in Jewish philology, science and philosophy from Arabic into Hebrew, either did not know of Gabirol's masterpiece
or did not think it important enough to translate. To judge from the extant fragments of the correspondence between
Samuel ibn Tibbon and Maimonides, it would seem that both were true; that is that Samuel ibn Tibbon had no access to
Gabirol's "Fons Vitæ," and that if he had had such access, Maimonides would have dissuaded him from translating it.
Maimonides actually tells his translator[82] that the only books worth studying are those of Aristotle and his true
commentators, Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Averroes. Alfarabi and Avicenna are also important, but other
writings, such as those of Empedocles, Pythagoras, Hermes, Porphyry, represent a pre-Aristotelian philosophy which is
obsolete, and are a waste of time. The books of Isaac Israeli on the "Elements" and on "Definitions," are no better, seeing
that Israeli was only a physician and no philosopher. He is not familiar with the "Microcosmus" of Joseph ibn Zaddik, but
infers from a knowledge of the man that his work is based upon the writings of the "Brothers of Purity"; and hence, we
may add, not strictly Aristotelian, and not particularly important. Not a word is here said about Gabirol, apparently
because Samuel ibn Tibbon had not inquired about him. But from Maimonides's judgment concerning the works of
"Empedocles," we may legitimately infer that he would have been no more favorable to Gabirol; for, as we shall see,
Gabirol's system is also based upon a point of view similar to that of the so-called "Empedocles." What the Tibbonides
left undone was, however, partially accomplished about a half century later by the commentator and critic Shem Tob
Falaquera (1225-1290). Apparently in agreement with Abraham ibn Daud that Gabirol's profuseness in his philosophic
masterpiece made it possible to reduce it to a tenth part of its size, Falaquera did not find it necessary to translate the
whole of the "Mekor Hayim" into Hebrew, giving us instead a translation of selected parts, which in his estimation
contained the gist of Gabirol's teaching. The absence of a complete Hebrew translation of Gabirol's philosophical work
meant of course that no one who did not know Arabic could have access to Gabirol's "Mekor Hayim," and this practically
excluded the majority of learned Jews after the first half of the thirteenth century. But the selections of Falaquera did not
seem to find many readers either, as may be inferred from the fact that so far only one single manuscript of this
translation is known.
En revanche, as the French would say, the Christian Scholastics of the thirteenth century made Gabirol their own and
studied him diligently. His fundamental thesis of a universal matter underlying all existence outside of God was made a
bone of contention between the two dominant schools; the Dominicans, led by Thomas Aquinas, opposing this un-
Aristotelian principle, the Franciscans with Duns Scotus at their head, adopting it as their own. "Ego autem redeo ad
sententiam Avicembronis," is a formula in Duns Scotus's discussion of the principle of matter.[83]
The translation of Gabirol's philosophy into an accessible language, which was not considered desirable by Jews, was
actually accomplished by Christians. About a century before Falaquera a complete translation into Latin was made in
Toledo of Gabirol's "Fountain of Life," under the title "Fons Vitæ." This translation was made at the instance of Raymond,
Archbishop of Toledo in the middle of the twelfth century, by Dominicus Gundissalinus, archdeacon of Segovia, with the
assistance of a converted Jewish physician, Ibn Daud (Avendehut, Avendeath), whose name after conversion became
Johannes Hispanus or Hispalensis. Unlike the Hebrew epitome of Falaquera this translation was not neglected, as is
clear from the rôle Gabirol's philosophy plays in the disputations of the schools, and from the fact that there are still
extant four manuscripts of the complete translation, one of an epitome thereof, and there is evidence that a fifth
manuscript existed in 1375 in the Papal library.[84] As Ibn Sina was corrupted by the Latin writers into Avicenna, and Ibn
Roshd into Averroes, so Ibn Gabirol became in turn, Avencebrol, Avicembron, Avicebron; and the Scholastics who fought
about his philosophy had no idea he was a Jew and celebrated as a writer of religious hymns used in the synagogue. He
was regarded now as a Mohammedan, now as a Christian.
This peculiar circumstance will help us to get an inkling of the reason for the neglect of Gabirol's philosophy in the
Jewish community. It is clear that a work which, like the "Fons Vitæ," made it possible for its author to be regarded as a
Mohammedan or even a Christian, cannot have had the Jewish imprint very deeply stamped upon its face. Nay more,
while the knowledge of its having been translated from the Arabic may have been sufficient in itself to stamp the author
as a Mohammedan, there must have been additional indications for his Scholastic admirers to make them regard him as
a Christian. An examination of the work lends some semblance of truth to these considerations.
Gabirol nowhere betrays his Jewishness in the "Fons Vitæ." He never quotes a Biblical verse or a Talmudic dictum. He
does not make any overt attempt to reconcile his philosophical views with religious faith. The treatise is purely
speculative as if religious dogma nowhere existed to block one's way or direct one's search. Abraham Ibn Daud, the
author of the philosophical treatise "Emunah Ramah" (The Exalted Faith), and the predecessor of Maimonides, criticises
Gabirol very severely, and that not merely because he disagrees with him in the conception of matter and finds Gabirol's
reasoning devoid of cogency and logical force—many bad arguments, he says, seem in the mind of Gabirol to be
equivalent to one good one—but principally because Gabirol failed to take a Jewish attitude in his philosophizing, and
actually, as Ibn Daud tells us, maintains views dangerous to Judaism (below, p. 198).
This will easily account for the fact that Gabirol, celebrated as he was as a poet, was lost sight of generally as a
philosopher. The matter is made clearer still if we add that his style in the "Mekor Hayim" is against him. It is devoid of all
merit whether of literary beauty or of logical conciseness and brevity. It is diffuse to a degree and frequently very
wearisome and tedious. One has to wade through pages upon pages of bare syllogisms, one more flimsy than another.
Finally, the point of view of Gabirol was that of a philosophy that was rapidly becoming obsolete, and Maimonides, the
ground having been made ready by Ibn Daud, gave this philosophy its death-blow by substituting for it the philosophy of
Aristotle.
We now understand why it is that, with few exceptions here and there, Gabirol's philosophical work was in the course of
time forgotten among the Jews, though his name Avicebron as well as some of his chief doctrines were well known to the
Scholastic writers. To be sure, even students of Scholastic literature had no direct access to Gabirol's treatise as it was
never printed and no one knew whether there were still any manuscripts of it extant or not. The only sources of
information concerning Avicebron's philosophy were Aquinas's refutations, and Duns Scotus's defence, and other
second-hand references in the writings of the Scholastics. Who Avicebron was no one knew. It was not until 1819 that
Amable Jourdain,[85] in tracing the history of the Latin translations of Aristotle, came to the conclusion that more must be
known about the philosophy of Avicebron's "Fons Vitæ" if we intended to understand the Scholastics. In 1845 Solomon
Munk discovered in the national library at Paris the epitome of Falaquera mentioned above, and comparing it with the
views of Avicebron as found in the discussions of the Scholastics, made the important discovery that the mysterious
Avicebron was neither a Mohammedan nor a Christian but a Jew, and none other than the famous poet Solomon ibn
Gabirol. Then began a search for copies of a Latin translation, which was rewarded amply. Both Munk and Seyerlen
discovered manuscript copies of the "Fons Vitæ," and now both the Hebrew epitome of Falaquera and the Latin
translation of Gundissalinus are accessible in print.[86] So much for the interesting history of Gabirol. Now a word as to
his views.
Shem Tob ibn Falaquera, in the brief introduction which he appends to his epitome of the "Mekor Hayim" says, "It seems
to me that Solomon ibn Gabirol follows in his book the views of the ancient philosophers as we find them in a book
composed by Empedocles concerning the 'Five Substances.'[87] This book is based upon the principle that all spiritual
substances have a spiritual matter; that the form comes from above and the matter receives it from below, i. e., that the
matter is a substratum and bears the form upon it." He then adds that Aristotle attributes a similar view to his
predecessors, but that this view is inconsistent with Aristotle's own thinking. For in his opinion what is material is
composite and possessed of potentiality. Hence only those things have matter which are subject to generation and
decay, and in general change from one state to another.
Without going into detail as to the nature of this work of Empedocles named by Falaquera as the source of Gabirol's
views—expositions of these so-called Empedoclean views and fragments from Empedocles's book have been found in
Arabian and Hebrew writers[88]—it is sufficient for us to know that it has nothing to do with the real Empedocles, the
ancient Greek philosopher; that it was another of the many spurious writings which circulated in the middle ages under
famous names of antiquity; and that like the "Theology of Aristotle," and the "Liber de Causis," mentioned in the
Introduction (p. xx), it was Neo-Platonic in character.
Thus Gabirol was a Neo-Platonist. This does not mean that he did not adopt many important Aristotelian conceptions.
Neo-Platonism itself could not have arisen without Aristotle. The ideas of matter and form, and potentiality and actuality,
and the categories, and so on, had become the fixed elements of philosophical thinking, and no new system could do
without them. In this sense Plotinus himself, the founder of Neo-Platonism, is an Aristotelian. When we speak of Gabirol
as a Neo-Platonist, we mean that the essence of his system is Neo-Platonic. He is not a dualist, but a monist. God and
matter are not opposed as two ultimate principles, as they are in Aristotle. Matter in Gabirol is ultimately identified with
God. In this he goes even beyond Plotinus. For whereas in Plotinus matter occupies the lowest scale in the gradation of
being as it flows from the One or the Good (cf. Introduction, p. xxxviii), and becomes equivalent to the non-existent, and is
the cause of evil, in Gabirol matter is the underlying substance for all being from the highest to the lowest, with the one
exception of the Creator himself.[89] It emanates from the essence of the Creator, forming the basis of all subsequent
emanations.[90] Hence the spiritual substances of the celestial world, or, to use a more technical and more precise term
—since spirit is not located in heaven or anywhere spatially—the intelligible world, have matter underlying their form.[91]
In fact, matter itself is intelligible or spiritual, not corporeal.[92] Corporeality and materiality are two different things. There
are various gradations of matter, to be sure; for the prime matter as it emerges from the essence of the Creator pervades
all existence from highest to lowest, and the further it extends from its origin the less spiritual and the more corporeal it
becomes until in the sublunar world we have in the matters of its particular objects, corporeal matter, i. e., matter affected
with quantity and magnitude and figure and color.[93] Like Plotinus, Gabirol conceives of the universe as a process of a
gradually descending series of existences or worlds, as the Kabbalistic writers term them; these cosmic existences
radiating or flowing out of the superabundant light and goodness of the Creator. The two extremes of this graded
universe are God at the one end, and the corporeal world at the other. Intermediate between these are the spiritual
substances, Intelligence, Soul and Nature.[94] Man as a microcosm, a universe in little, partakes of both the corporeal
and intermediate worlds, and hence may serve as a model of the constitution of the macrocosm, or great universe. His
body is typical of the corporeal world, which consists of the lowest matter, viz., that which has no other form except that
of corporeality, or extension, and the forms of figure, color, and so on, borne on top of the extension.[95]
Body as such is at rest and is not capable of action. To act it needs an agent. Hence it needs an agency to compose its
parts and hold them together. We call this agency Nature. Man's body also grows, is nourished and propagates its kind
as do plants. This likewise must have its non-corporeal cause. This we call vegetative soul. Man has also sense
perception and local motion like the animals. The principle or substance causing this is the animal soul. Man also thinks
and reasons and reflects. This is brought about by the rational soul. Finally, man has a still higher function than
discursive thought. The latter has to search and to pass from premise to conclusion, whereas the apprehension of the
intelligence takes place "without seeking, without effort, and without any other cause except its own essence, because it
is full of perfection." In other words, it is immediate intellectual intuition of which Gabirol speaks here. The Intelligence is
capable of this because it has in itself, constituting its essence, all the forms of existence, and knowledge means
possession of the forms of the things known.
As man is typical of the universe, it follows that there are cosmic existences corresponding to the principles or powers
just enumerated in man, and the relation of the latter to the former is that of the particular to the general. Hence there is a
cosmic Intelligence, a cosmic soul embracing the rational, the animal and the vegetative parts, and a cosmic nature. Of
these the more perfect is the cause of the less perfect; hence the order in which we named them represents the order of
causation or of emanation from the prime source.
The lowest of these emanations is the matter which sustains extension or magnitude, and with it the process ceases.
This matter is no longer the source of an additional form of existence. The various qualities and attributes which inhere in
this corporeal matter are caused by the spiritual substances above. For like the prototype of all generosity and goodness
the First Essence or God, every one of the spiritual substances proceeding from him has the same tendency of imparting
its form or forms to the substance next below it. But the forms thus bestowed are no longer the same as they are in the
essence of the bestowing substance, as it depends upon the recipient what sort of form it will receive. An inferior
receiving substance will receive a superior form in an inferior way. That is, the form which in the substance above the
one in question is contained in a spiritual and unitary manner, will be transformed in the substance below it into
something less spiritual, less unified, and more nearly corporeal, i. e., visible and tangible. Hence the visible and
tangible, and in general the sensible qualities of particular things in the sublunar world, are in reality descended from a
line of spiritual ancestors in the forms of the simple substances, Intelligence, Soul and Nature. But it is their distance from
the prime source, which increases with every transmission of influence, together with the cruder nature of the receiving
substance, that makes the resulting forms corporeal and sensible. The matter may be made clear if we use the analogy
of light, which is invisible as long as it is in air because it penetrates it, but becomes visible when it comes in contact with
a gross body which it cannot penetrate. It then remains on the surface condensed, and becomes visible to the senses.
We thus see that the higher substance acts upon the lower and contains all that is found in the latter, though in a more
perfect and simple manner. The lower substances flow from the higher and yet the latter are not diminished in their
essence and power.[96]
That ordinary material objects are composed of matter and form is admitted and we need not now prove it, as we have
already discussed the subject in the Introduction, where we gave an outline of the Aristotelian philosophy. The principle
peculiar to Gabirol is that not merely the material objects of the sublunar world, but that the intelligible or spiritual
substances also are composed of matter and form.[97] Whenever two things have something in common and something
in which they differ, that which they have in common is the matter, that in which they differ is the form. Two things
absolutely simple must be prime to each other, i. e., they must have nothing in common, for if they have anything in
common they have everything in common, and they are no longer two things but one. Hence a spiritual substance must
be composite, for it must have something by which it differs from a corporeal substance, and something, viz.,
substantiality, which it has in common with it. In the same way the intelligible substances, Intelligence and Soul, have
their substantiality in common, and they differ in form. Hence they are composed of matter and form, and the matter must
be the same in all the intelligible substances; for their differences are due to their forms, hence if their matters also
differed, they would have to differ in form, but matter as such has no form. Hence matter in itself is everywhere the same.
As the Intelligence is the highest existence next to God, and is composed of matter and form, these are respectively the
universal matter and universal form, embracing all subsequent matters and forms.[98] Hence the Intelligence in knowing
itself knows everything, as everything is contained in it. And as it is prior to everything and the cause of everything it has
an immediate knowledge of all things without effort or searching.
But what is the origin of universal matter and universal form which, in constituting Intelligence, are the fundamental
principles of all existence?[99] The answer is they come from the First Essence, God. Unity comes before duality or
plurality, and there is no true unity except in God. Whatever issues from him is ipso facto, as a product which is not God,
affected with duality. Matter and Form is this duality. Their union is necessary and real, and it is only in thought that we
can keep them apart. In reality they form a unit, their union varying in perfection according as they are nearer or further
away from their origin. Hence the union is closest in Intelligence, the first divine emanation, and least close in corporeal
objects of the sublunar world, where plurality is the order of the day.
This process by which universal matter and form issue from God may be called creation.[100] But we must conceive of it
on the analogy of water flowing from a fountain in continued and uninterrupted succession. The only difference is that
the emanation from God takes place without motion and without time.
The union of universal form and universal matter must be thought of as a stamping of the form upon the matter. Matter
has in itself no actual or definable existence. It serves merely as a tabula rasa, as a potential background, as an empty
receptacle, as a reflecting mirror for form to be written, filled out, impressed or reflected therein or upon. Hence we may
view God as the spectator, universal matter as the mirror, and universal form as the reflection of the spectator in the
glass. God himself does not enter the glass, only his reflection is outlined therein. And as matter and form are really the
whole world, it would follow that the universe is a reflection of God, though God remains in himself and does not enter
the world with his essence.
We may also picture to ourselves this impression of form upon matter on the analogy of speech. The speaker's words
impress ideas upon the soul of the listener. So God speaks and his Word or Will impresses form upon matter. The world
is created by the Word or the Will[101] of God.
In all these similes matter appears as something external to God, upon which he impresses form. But this is not strictly
true, since matter has no real existence without form, and has never so existed. The existence of matter and form is
simultaneous, and both come from God, matter from his essence, form from his attribute, or his Wisdom, or his Word, or
his Will. And yet in God, who is a perfect unity, essence and attribute are one. It is the Will of God, not God himself, that
must be regarded as the spectator, whose outline is reflected in the mirror of matter in the above simile. It is the Will of
God that writes form upon the chart of matter, and thereby produces a world. It is in virtue of the Will that God is said to
be in everything.
But what is this will of God as distinguished from God himself, since in God there can be no duality of any kind? Gabirol's
answer is not clear or satisfactory. The will, he says, is identical with God if we consider it apart from its activity;
considered as active it is different from the divine essence. Exactly to describe it is impossible, but the following is an
approximation. It is a divine power producing matter and form, binding them together, pervading them throughout their
extent above and below, as the soul pervades the body, and moving and ordering everything.
God himself, or the First Essence, can be known only through the Will as pervading everything, i. e., through his effects
in the world. And in this way too only his existence can be known but not his essence as he is in himself, because God is
above everything and infinite. The soul may know Intelligence because though the latter is above the soul there is some
similarity between them. But the First Essence has no similarity to Intelligence, therefore no intelligence can know it.
There is a kind of mystic knowledge by which man may come in touch with the spiritual substances and rise even to
universal matter, which is above Intelligence. "If you wish to form a picture of these substances," the master says to the
disciple in the "Fons Vitæ," "you must raise your intellect to the last intelligible, you must purify it from all sordid
sensibility, free it from the captivity of nature and approach with the force of your intelligence to the last limit of intelligible
substance that it is possible for you to comprehend, until you are entirely divo