Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/447

433 five chapters appeared in the first edition is now given in full, and Mandonnet provides it with a critical discussion of its authorship.

This discussion is, on the whole, very interesting, learned, and convincing, except on one point, where Mandonnet is guilty of undue haste in jumping to conclusions on the basis of superficial resemblances, and where a little circumspection and consultation of authorities would have saved him from a blunder. Fortunately the error in this case affects but a paragraph or two of his otherwise plausible and learned discussion. From the fact that the author of the De erroribus philosophorum cites Maimonides's De expositione legum for the latter's erroneous views, instead of the Dux neutrorum as the Guide of the Perplexed is called in the 13th century Latin translation and in the writings of Albertus Magnus, Mandonnet without further ado makes up his mind that the De expositione legum, which no other Scholastic quotes, a title, in fact, which Mandonnet has never seen before, is identical with the Livre des preceptes, which Bloch edited in the original Arabic in 1888. Without making any inquiries of those who know, what the Livre des preceptes might be, and whether it is at all likely that it can be the book meant by the anonymous author (even the titles are not strikingly similar), Mandonnet proceeds to build an hypothesis on this evidence of the author's unusual familiarity with Arabian and Hebrew sources, and decides that he lived in Spain.

The fact of the matter is that the Livre des preceptes was never dreamt of by the author of the De erroribus, as it contains no philosophical disquisitions of any sort, but is devoted to an enumeration of the six hundred and thirteen positive and negative commandments according to the good old Rabbinic tradition. On the other hand, the De expositione legum of the anonymous author is, strange as it may seem, the very book of Maimonides which Mandonnet and the rest of us would have expected the author to quote. The title is indeed strange, and yet not so strange as it might seem. The third part of the Guide is indeed devoted for the most part to an exposition of the laws, and the assignment to them of rational meanings. The first part is concerned with an exposition of the names of God found in the sacred books, and the earliest Latin translation, the one used by the scholastics of the thirteenth century, renders the author's purpose in the following words: "Istius libri prima intentio est explanare diversitates nominum quae inveniuntur in libris prophetarum." Upon the strength of this, the Munich Ms. of this first translation bears the superscription (by the Monks of Kaisheim, according to Perles, Monatsschrift für