Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/276

 the successive emanations from the First Cause as reaching down to different spheres. He opposes also the attempt of the Mutakallimin to reconcile philosophy and theology as tending to undermine the truths of revealed religion, so that he takes a more reactionary position than al-Ghazali. This was inevitable, for Jewish thought had as yet been much less influenced by philosophy than was the case with the Muslims. He objects also to the description of the soul as intellect, more it would appear because common usage confined "intellectual activity" too much to philosophical speculation, and especially he protested against the implication that only souls of philosophers were finally united to the Agent Intellect. The soul of man is a spiritual substance and imperishable; it does not win immortality by intellectual activity but is necessarily immortal by its own nature. He admits, however, that the passive soul in man is influenced by the Agent Intellect, which he seems to regard as the wisdom of God personified. Generally, therefore, Hal-Levi defined Jewish orthodoxy as against the teachings of the philosophers: he recognises the force of philosophical speculation, but is himself distinctly conservative. God was literally the creator, and no philosophical definition of creation which tended to explain it otherwise than according to traditional belief was permissible. But Hal-Levi does not seem to have had any great influence outside Judaism, and his work rather tends to show how far Jewish thought of the 6th cent. of