Page:Philosophical Review Volume 27.djvu/323

No. 3.] The answer to these questions largely hinges on another. Was the greatest of Egyptian philosophers, Plotinus, some of whose works under the false title Theology of Aristotle so profoundly affected the thinking of a number of Jewish philosophers, consciously or unconsciously influenced by Philo? The evidence may be scant. But the patient research that goes into the by-ways and the hedges, and does not always follow the beaten track, has its merits. The hewer of stones in the quarry renders a service as essential as that of the finished artist.

Professor Husik plunges in medias res. That is no serious fault. The impatient remark to the academician who was inclined to stop at too many stations on his journey from the beginnings of things to the immediate subject in hand "Passons au deluge!" does not apply to him. Let it not be imagined, however, that he is not fully aware of the continuity of thought and the problems of transmission. Nor has he any penchant for running through open doors. Even when he deals with the best known Jewish philosophers he is a scribe bringing forth from his treasure things old and new. There is not only much that is fresh in his reinterpretation of Maimonides; he has added by his own researches to our knowledge of the influence exerted on Chris- tian thinkers by this greatest of Jewish mediaeval philosophers. It is an extremely delicate task to gauge the precise effect of a philosopher's thought or a prophet's word. The very spirit animating him, essentially the same mental and moral proclivities, may, in a different environment, produce entirely different manifestations. Professor Husik suggests that were Maimonides living in our day, we may suppose he would be more favorably inclined to the mechanical principle as a scientific method (p. 276), but also that he would probably still object to the eternity of the world and mechanical necessity on religious grounds (p. 274). This has a certain family likeness to the attempt at defining what the attitude of Jesus would be, were he living to-day, on such questions as prohibition, marriage and divorce, Marxian socialism, evolution, Christian Science, or the 'multiverse' of William James. If Maimonides could have continued to live to the present day, preserved his independence of mind and eagerness to learn, and become 'more favorably inclined to the mechanical principle,' there would seem to be nothing to forbid the assumption that he might also have greatly modified his views on the Bible, miracles, and prophecy, perhaps even on the Aristotelian categories and the nature of ultimate reality. It is intimated that Maimonides shared the view of Averroës that there is no individual immortality (p. xlvii).