He was
born September 27th, 1840.
born September 27th, 1840.
Warner - World's Best Literature - v16 - Lev to Mai
My ditty must come to a finish
Because all the liquor is out!
SONG OF THE SEA
"Woe to us when we lose the watery wall! »- TIMOTHY TICKLER.
IF
F E'ER that dreadful hour should come-but God avert the day! -
When England's glorious flag must bend, and yield old Ocean's
sway;
When foreign ships shall o'er that deep, where she is empress, lord;
When the cross of red from boltsprit-head is hewn by foreign sword;
When foreign foot her quarter-deck with proud stride treads along;
When her peaceful ships meet haughty check from hail of foreign
tongue :
One prayer, one only prayer is mine,- that ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night!
If ever other prince than ours wield sceptre o'er that main,
Where Howard, Blake, and Frobisher the Armada smote of Spain;
Where Blake, in Cromwell's iron sway, swept tempest-like the seas,
From North to South, from East to West, resistless as the breeze;
Where Russell bent great Louis's power, which bent before to none,
And crushed his arm of naval strength, and dimmed his Rising Sun:
One prayer, one only prayer is mine,- that ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night!
## p. 9568 (#600) ###########################################
9568
DR. WILLIAM MAGINN
If ever other keel than ours triumphant plow that brine,
[line;
Where Rodney met the Count de Grasse, and broke the Frenchman's
Where Howe upon the first of June met the Jacobins in fight,
And with old England's loud huzzas broke down their godless might;
Where Jervis at St. Vincent's felled the Spaniards' lofty tiers,
Where Duncan won at Camperdown, and Exmouth at Algiers:
One prayer, one only prayer is mine,- that ere is seen that sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night!
But oh! what agony it were, when we should think on thee,
The flower of all the Admirals that ever trod the sea!
I shall not name thy honored name; but if the white-cliffed Isle
Which reared the Lion of the deep, the Hero of the Nile,—
Him who 'neath Copenhagen's self o'erthrew the faithless Dane,
Who died at glorious Trafalgar, o'ervanquished France and Spain,-
Should yield her power, one prayer is mine,- that ere is seen that
sight,
Ere there be warning of that woe, I may be whelmed in night!
## p. 9569 (#601) ###########################################
9569
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
(1839-)
OHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY is conspicuous among contemporary
Greek scholars and historians for devoting himself less to
the study of the golden age of the Greek intellect than to
the post-Alexandrian period, when the union of Greece with the
Orient produced the Hellenistic world. It is in this highly colored,
essentially modern world of decadent Greek energy that Professor
Mahaffy is most at home, and in which he finds the greatest number
of parallels to the civilization of his own day. He is disposed indeed
to link England and Ireland, through their
political life, to the Athens and Sparta of
the third century before Christ, and to find
precedents in the Grecian republics for
democratic conditions in the United States.
In the opening chapter of his Greek Life
and Thought,' after dwelling upon the hos-
tile attitude of Sparta and Athens towards
the Macedonian government, he adds, "But
we are quite accustomed in our own day to
this Home-Rule and Separatist spirit. "
J. P. MAHAFFY
It is this intimate manner of approach-
ing a far-off theme that gives to Professor
Mahaffy's work much of its interest. He is
continually translating ancient history into
the terms of modern life. "Let us save ancient history," he writes,
"from its dreary fate in the hands of the dry antiquarian, the nar-
row scholar; and while we utilize all his research and all his learn-
ing, let us make the acts and lives of older men speak across the
chasm of centuries and claim kindred with the men and motives of
to-day. For this and this only is to write history in the full and real
sense. "
Whatever the merits of his scholarship, Professor Mahaffy has
adhered closely to his ideal of a historian. He has a thorough grasp
upon the spirit of that period for which he has the keenest appre-
ciation, and which he is able to present to his readers with the great-
est clearness and vividness of color and outline. It is true, doubtless,
as he says, that the exclusive attention paid by modern scholars to the
XVI-599
## p. 9570 (#602) ###########################################
9570
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
age of spotless Atticism has overshadowed that Oriental-Hellenistic
world which rose after Alexander sank. The majority of persons
know little of that rich life of decaying arts and flourishing philoso-
phies, and strangely modern political and social conditions, which had
its centres in Alexandria and Antioch. It is of this that Professor
Mahaffy writes familiarly in his Greek Life and Thought,' and in
his Greek World under Roman Sway. ' He succeeds in throwing a
great deal of light upon this period of history; less perhaps through
sheer force of scholarship than through his happy faculty of finding
a family relationship in the poets, philosophers, statesmen, and kings
of a long-dead world. What he may lose as a "pure scholar» he
thus gains as a historian.
In his classical researches, he has profited greatly by his acquaint-
ance with German investigations in this field. Although of Irish
parentage, he was born in Switzerland in 1839, and the roots of his
education were fixed in the soil of German scholarship. His subse-
quent residence at Trinity College, Dublin, as professor of ancient
history, has by no means weaned him from his earlier educational
influences. He attaches the utmost importance to the thorough-going
spirit of the German Grecians. He makes constant use of their discov-
eries. Nevertheless Professor Mahaffy is more of a sympathetic Irish
historian or historical essayist than a strict Greek scholar after the
German pattern. He is at his best when he is writing of the social
side of Hellenistic life. His 'Greek Life and Thought,' his 'Greek
World under Roman Sway,' his 'Survey of Greek Civilization,' his
'Social Life in Greece,' show keen insight into the conditions which
governed the surface appearances of a world whose colors have not
yet faded.
This world of Oriental sensuousness wedded to Greek
intelligence, this world which began with Demosthenes and Alexan-
der and ended with Nero and St. John, seems to Professor Mahaffy
a more perfect prototype of the modern world than the purer Attic
civilization which preceded it, or the civilization of Imperial Rome
which followed it.
Like the majority of modern Greek scholars, Professor Mahaffy has
engaged in antiquarian research upon the soil of Greece itself. His
'Rambles and Studies in Greece,' a work of conversational charm,
shows not a little poetical feeling for the memories that haunt the
living sepulchre of a great dead race.
Other works of Professor Mahaffy include 'Problems in Greek
History, Prolegomena to Ancient History,' 'Lectures on Primitive
Civilization, The Story of Alexander's Empire,' 'Old Greek Life,'
and the History of Classical Greek Literature. ' His value as a
historian and student of Greek life lies mainly in his power of sug-
gestion, and in his original and fearless treatment of subjects usually
་
>
## p. 9571 (#603) ###########################################
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
9571
approached with the dreary deference of self-conscious scholarship.
His revelation of the same human nature linking the world of two
thousand years ago to the world of the present day, has earned for
his Greek studies deserved popularity.
-
CHILDHOOD IN ANCIENT LIFE
From Old Greek Education'
WⓇ
E FIND in Homer, especially in the Iliad, indications of the
plainest kind that Greek babies were like the babies of
modern Europe: equally troublesome, equally delightful to
their parents, equally uninteresting to the rest of society. The
famous scene in the sixth book of the Iliad, when Hector's infant,
Astyanax, screams at the sight of his father's waving crest, and
the hero lays his helmet on the ground that he may laugh and
weep over the child; the love and tenderness of Andromache,
and her pathetic laments in the twenty-second book,-are famil-
iar to all. She foresees the hardships and unkindnesses to her
orphan boy, "who was wont upon his father's knees to eat the
purest marrow and the rich fat of sheep, and when sleep came
upon him, and he ceased his childish play, he would lie in the
arms of his nurse, on a soft cushion, satisfied with every comfort. "
So again, a protecting goddess is compared to a mother keeping
the flies from her sleeping infant; and a pertinacious friend, to
a little girl who, running beside her mother, begs to be taken
up, holding her mother's dress and delaying her, and with tear-
ful eyes keeps looking up till the mother denies her no longer.
These are only stray references, and yet they speak no less clearly
than if we had asked for an express answer to a direct inquiry.
So we have the hesitation of the murderers sent to make away
with the infant Cypselus, who had been foretold to portend dan-
ger to the Corinthian Herods of that day. The smile of the
baby unmans- or should we rather say unbrutes? —the first ruf-
fian, and so the task is passed on from man to man.
This story
in Herodotus is a sort of natural Greek parallel to the great
Shakespearean scene, where another child sways his intended tor-
turer with an eloquence more conscious and explicit, but not per-
haps more powerful, than the radiant smile of the Greek baby.
Thus Euripides, the great master of pathos, represents Iphigenia
bringing her infant brother Orestes to plead for her, with that
## p. 9572 (#604) ###########################################
9572
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
unconsciousness of sorrow which pierces us to the heart more
than the most affecting rhetoric. In modern art a little child
playing about its dead mother, and waiting with contentment for
her awaking, is perhaps the most powerful appeal to human com-
passion which we are able to conceive.
On the other hand, the troubles of infancy were then as now
very great. We do not indeed hear of croup, or teething, or
measles, or whooping-cough. But these are occasional matters,
and count as nothing beside the inexorable tyranny of a sleepless
baby. For then as now, mothers and nurses had a strong preju-
dice in favor of carrying about restless children, and so soothing
them to sleep. The unpractical Plato requires that in his fabu-
lous Republic two or three stout nurses shall be in readiness to
carry about each child; because children, like gamecocks, gain
spirit and endurance by this treatment! What they really gain
is a gigantic power of torturing their mothers. Most children
can readily be taught to sleep in a bed, or even in an arm-chair,
but an infant once accustomed to being carried about will insist
upon it; and so it came that Greek husbands were obliged to
relegate their wives to another sleeping-room, where the nightly
squalling of the furious infant might not disturb the master as
well as the mistress of the house. But the Greek gentleman
was able to make good his damaged rest by a midday siesta, and
so required but little sleep at night. The modern father in
northern Europe, with his whole day's work and waking, is
therefore in a more disadvantageous position.
Of course very fashionable people kept nurses; and it was the
highest tone at Athens to have a Spartan nurse for the infant,
just as an English nurse is sought out among foreign noblesse.
We are told that these women made the child hardier, that they
used less swathing and bandaging, and allowed free play for the
limbs; and this, like all the Spartan physical training, was ap-
proved of and admired by the rest of the Greek public, though
its imitation was never suggested save in the unpractical specula-
tions of Plato.
Whether they also approved of a diet of marrow and mutton
suet, which Homer, in the passage just cited, considers the lux-
ury of princes, does not appear. As Homer was the Greek
Bible, an inspired book containing perfect wisdom on all things,
human and divine, - there must have been many orthodox par-
ents who followed his prescription. But we hear no approval or
## p. 9573 (#605) ###########################################
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
9573
censure of such diet. Possibly marrow may have represented
our cod-liver oil in strengthening delicate infants. But as the
Homeric men fed far more exclusively on meat than their his-
torical successors, some vegetable substitute, such as olive oil,
must have been in use later on. Even within our memory,
mutton suet boiled in milk was commonly recommended by phy-
sicians for the delicacy now treated by cod-liver oil.
The sup-
posed strengthening of children by air and exposure, or by early
neglect of their comforts, was as fashionable at Sparta as it is
with many modern theorists; and it probably led in both cases
to the same result, the extinction of the weak and delicate.
These theorists parade the cases of survival of stout children
that is, their exceptional soundness-as the effect of this harsh
treatment, and so satisfy themselves that experience confirms.
their views. Now with the Spartans this was logical enough;
for as they professed and desired nothing but physical results, as
they despised intellectual qualities and esteemed obedience to be
the highest of moral ones, they were perhaps justified in their
proceeding. So thoroughly did they advocate the production of
healthy citizens for military purposes, that they were quite con-
tent that the sickly should die. In fact, in the case of obviously
weak and deformed infants, they did not hesitate to expose them
in the most brutal sense,- not to cold and draughts, but to the
wild beasts in the mountains.
-
This brings us to the first shocking contrast between the
Greek treatment children and ours. We cannot really doubt,
from the free use of the idea in Greek tragedies, in the comedies
of ordinary life, and in theories of political economy, that the
exposing of new-born children was not only sanctioned by public
feeling, but actually practiced throughout Greece. Various mo-
tives combined to justify or to extenuate this practice. In the
first place, the infant was regarded as the property of its parents,
indeed of its father, to an extent inconceivable to most modern
Europeans. The State only, whose claim overrode all other con-
siderations, had a right for public reasons to interfere with the
dispositions of a father. Individual human life had not attained
what may be called the exaggerated value derived from sundry
superstitions, which remains even after those superstitions have
decayed. And moreover, in many Greek States, the contempt
for commercial pursuits, and the want of outlet for practical en-
ergy, made the supporting of large families cumbersome, or the
## p. 9574 (#606) ###########################################
9574
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
subdivision of patrimonies excessive. Hence the prudence or the
selfishness of parents did not hesitate to use an escape which
modern civilization condemns as not only criminal but as horribly
cruel. How little even the noblest Greek theorists felt this ob-
jection appears from the fact that Plato, the Attic Moses, sanc-
tions infanticide under certain circumstances or in another form,
in his ideal State. In the genteel comedy it is often mentioned
as a somewhat painful necessity, but enjoined by prudence. No-
where does the agony of the mother's heart reach us through
their literature, save in one illustration used by the Platonic
Socrates, where he compares the anger of his pupils, when first
confuted out of their prejudices, to the fury of a young mother
deprived of her first infant. There is something horrible in the
very allusion, as if in after life Attic mothers became hardened
to this treatment. We must suppose the exposing of female
infants to have been not uncommon, until the just retribution
of barrenness fell upon the nation, and the population dwindled
away by a strange atrophy.
In the many family suits argued by the Attic orators, we do
not (I believe) find a case in which a large family of children
is concerned. Four appears a larger number than the average.
Marriages between relations as close as uncle and niece, and even
half-brothers and sisters, were not uncommon; but the researches
of modern science have removed the grounds for believing that
this practice would tend to diminish the race. It would certainly
increase any pre-existing tendency to hereditary disease; yet we
do not hear of infantile diseases any more than we hear of deli-
cate infants. Plagues and epidemics were common enough; but
as already observed, we do not hear of measles, or whooping-
cough, or scarlatina, or any of the other constant persecutors of
our nurseries.
As the learning of foreign languages was quite beneath the
notions of the Greek gentleman, who rather expected all barba-
rians to learn his language, the habit of employing foreign nurses,
so useful and even necessary to good modern education, was well-
nigh unknown. It would have been thought a great misfortune
to any Hellenic child to be brought up speaking Thracian or
Egyptian. Accordingly foreign slave attendants, with their strange
accent and rude manners, were not allowed to take charge of
children till they were able to go to school and had learned their
mother tongue perfectly.
## p. 9575 (#607) ###########################################
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
9575
But the women's apartments, in which children were kept for
the first few years, are closed so completely to us that we can
but conjecture a few things about the life and care of Greek
babies. A few late epigrams tell the grief of parents bereaved
of their infants. Beyond this, classical literature affords us no
light. The backwardness in culture of Greek women leads us to
suspect that then, as now, Greek babies were more often spoilt
than is the case among the serious northern nations. The term
Spartan mother" is, however, still proverbial; and no doubt in
that exceptional State, discipline was so universal and so highly
esteemed that it penetrated even to the nursery. But in the
rest of Greece, we may conceive the young child arriving at his
schoolboy age more willful and headstrong than most of our
more watched and worried infants. Archytas the philosopher
earned special credit for inventing the rattle, and saving much
damage to household furniture by occupying children with this
toy.
The external circumstances determining a Greek boy's educa-
tion were somewhat different from ours. We must remember that
all old Greek life-except in rare cases, such as that of Elis, of
which we know nothing-was distinctly town life; and so, nat-
urally, Greek schooling was day-schooling, from which the child-
ren returned to the care of their parents. To hand over boys, far
less girls, to the charge of a boarding-school, was perfectly un-
known, and would no doubt have been gravely censured. Orphans
were placed under the care of their nearest male relative, even
when their education was provided (as it was in some cases) by
the State. Again, as regards the age of going to school, it would
naturally be early, seeing that the day-schools may well include
infants of tender age, and that in Greek households neither father
nor mother was often able or disposed to undertake the educa-
tion of the children. Indeed, we find it universal that even
the knowledge of the letters and reading were obtained from a
schoolmaster. All these circumstances would point to an early
beginning of Greek school life; whereas, on the other hand, the
small number of subjects required in those days, the absence from
the programme of various languages, of most exact sciences, and
of general history and geography, made it unnecessary to begin
so early, or work so hard, as our unfortunate children have to
do. Above all, there were no competitive examinations, except in
athletics and music. The Greeks never thought of promoting a
## p. 9576 (#608) ###########################################
9576
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
man for "dead knowledge," but for his living grasp of science
or of life.
Owing to these causes, we find the theorists discussing, as they
now do, the expediency of waiting till the age of seven before
beginning serious education: some advising it, others recommend-
ing easy and half-playing lessons from an earlier period. And
then, as now, we find the same curious silence on the really
important fact that the exact number of years a child has lived
is nothing to the point in question; and that while one child
may be too young at seven to commence work, many more may
be distinctively too old.
At all events, we may assume in parents the same varieties
of over-anxiety, of over-indulgence, of nervousness, and of care-
lessness, about their children; and so it doubtless came to pass
that there was in many cases a gap between infancy and school
life which was spent in playing and doing mischief. This may
be fairly inferred, not only from such anecdotes as that of Alci-
biades playing with his fellows in the street, evidently without
the protection of any pedagogue, but also from the large nomen-
clature of boys' games preserved to us in the glossaries of later
grammarians.
These games are quite distinct from the regular exercises in
the palæstra. We have only general descriptions of them, and
these either by Greek scholiasts or by modern philologists. But
in spite of the sad want of practical knowledge of games shown
by both, the instincts of boyhood are so uniform that we can
often frame a very distinct idea of the sort of amusement popu-
lar among Greek children. For young boys, games can hardly
consist of anything else than either the practicing of some bodily
dexterity, such as hopping on one foot higher or longer than
is easy, or throwing further with a stone; or else some imitation
of war, such as snowballing, or pulling a rope across a line, or
pursuing under fixed conditions; or lastly, the practice of some
mechanical ingenuity, such as whipping a top or shooting with
marbles. So far as climate or mechanical inventions have not
altered our little boys' games, we find all these principles rep-
resented in Greek games. There was the hobby or cock horse
(kálamon, parabênai); standing or hopping on one leg (askōliázein),
which, as the word askos implies, was attempted on a skin bottle
filled with liquid and greased; blindman's buff (chalke muta, lit-
erally "brazen fly "), in which the boy cried, "I am hunting a
## p. 9577 (#609) ###########################################
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
9577
>>
brazen fly," and the rest answered, "You will not catch it;
games of hide-and-seek, of taking and releasing prisoners, of fool
in the middle, of playing at king: in fact, there is probably no
simple child's game now known which was not then in use.
A few more details may, however, be interesting. There was
a game called kyndalismós [Drive the peg], in which the kyndalon
was a peg of wood with a heavy end sharpened, which boys
sought to strike into a softened place in the earth so that it stood
upright and knocked out the peg of a rival. This reminds us of
the peg-top splitting which still goes on in our streets. Another,
called ostrakinda, consisted of tossing an oyster shell in the air,
of which one side was blackened or moistened and called night,
the other, day, or sun and rain. The boys were divided into
two sides with these names; and according as their side of the
shell turned up, they pursued and took prisoners their adversaries.
On the other hand, epostrakismós was making a shell skip along
the surface of water by a horizontal throw, and winning by the
greatest number of skips. Eis omillan [At strife], though a gen-
eral expression for any contest, was specially applied to tossing
a knuckle-bone or smooth stone so as to lie in the centre of a
fixed circle, and to disturb those which were already in good
positions. This was also done into a small hole (trópa). They
seem to have shot dried beans from their fingers as we do mar-
bles. They spun coins on their edge (chalkismós) [game of cop-
pers].
Here are two games not perhaps so universal nowadays:
pentalithizein [Fives, Jackstones] was a technical word for toss-
ing up five pebbles or astragali, and receiving them so as to
make them lie on the back of the hand. Melolonthe, or the
beetle game, consists in flying a beetle by a long thread, and
guiding him like a kite; but by way of improvement they at-
tached a waxed splinter, lighted, to his tail,- and this cruelty is
now practiced, according to a good authority (Papasliotis), in
Greece, and has even been known to cause serious fires. Tops
were known under various names (bembix, strómbos, strobilos),
one of them certainly a humming-top. So were hoops (trochoi).
Ball-playing was ancient and diffused, even among the Ho-
meric heroes. But as it was found very fashionable and care-
fully practiced by both Mexicans and Peruvians at the time of
the conquest, it is probably common to all civilized races. We
have no details left us of complicated games with balls; and the
## p. 9578 (#610) ###########################################
9578
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
mere throwing them up and catching them one from the other,
with some rhythmic motion, is hardly worth all the poetic fervor
shown about this game by the Greeks. But possibly the musical
and dancing accompaniments were very important, in the case of
grown people and in historical times. Pollux, however, our
main authority for most of these games,-in one place distinctly
describes both football and hand-ball. "The names," he says, “of
games with balls are―epískyros, phainínda, apórraxis, ouranía.
The first is played by two even sides, who draw a line in the
centre which they call skyros, on which they place the ball.
They draw two other lines behind each side; and those who first
reach the ball throw it (rhiptousin) over the opponents, whose
duty it is to catch it and return it, until one side drives the
other back over their goal line. " Though Pollux makes no men-
tion of kicking, this game is evidently our football in substance.
He proceeds: "Phaininda was called either from Phainindes, the
first discoverer, or from phenakizein [to play tricks]," etc. , we
need not follow his etymologies; "and apórraxis consists of mak-
ing a ball bound off the ground, and sending it against a wall,
counting the number of hops according as it was returned. " And
as if to make the anticipations of our games more curiously com-
plete, there is cited from the history of Manuel, by the Byzantine
Cinnamus (A. D. 1200), a clear description of the Canadian la-
crosse, a sort of hockey played with racquets:
"Certain youths, divided equally, leave in a level place, which
they have before prepared and measured, a ball made of leather,
about the size of an apple, and rush at it, as if it were a prize lying
in the middle, from their fixed starting-point [a goal]. Each of them
has in his right hand a racquet (rhabdon) [wand, staff] of suitable
length, ending in a sort of flat bend, the middle of which is occupied
by gut strings dried by seasoning, and plaited together in net fash-
ion. Each side strives to be the first to bring it to the opposite end
of the ground from that allotted to them. Whenever the ball is
driven by the racquets (rhabdoi) to the end of the ground, it counts
as a victory. "
Two games which were not confined to children- and which
are not widely diffused, though they exist among us-are the use
of astragali, or knuckle-bones of animals, cut so nearly square as
to serve for dice; and with these children threw for luck, the
highest throw (sixes) being accounted the best. In later Greek
art, representations of Eros and other youthful figures engaged
## p. 9579 (#611) ###########################################
JOHN PENTLAND MAHAFFY
9579
with astragali are frequent. It is to be feared that this game.
was an introduction to dice-playing, which was so common, and
so often abused that among the few specimens of ancient dice
remaining, there are some false and some which were evidently
loaded. The other game to which I allude is the Italian morra,
the guessing instantaneously how many fingers are thrown up by
the player and his adversary. It is surprising how fond southern
men and boys still are of this simple game, chiefly however for
gambling purposes.
There was tossing in a blanket, walking on stilts, swinging,
leap-frog, and many other similar plays, which are ill understood
and worse explained by the learned, and of no importance to
us, save as proving the general similarity of the life of little boys
then and now.
We know nothing about the condition of little girls of the
same age, except that they specially indulged in ball-playing.
Like our
own children, the girls probably joined to a lesser
degree in the boys' games, and only so far as they could be
carried on within doors, in the court of the house. There are
graceful representations of their swinging and practicing our see-
saw. Dolls they had in plenty, and doll-making (of clay) was
quite a special trade at Athens. In more than one instance we
have found in children's graves their favorite dolls, which sorrow-
ing parents laid with them as a sort of keepsake in the tomb.
Most unfortunately there is hardly a word left of the nursery
rhymes, and of the folk-lore, which are very much more inter-
esting than the physical amusements of children. Yet we know
that such popular songs existed in plenty; we know too, from
the early fame of Esop's fables, from the myths so readily
invented and exquisitely told by Plato, that here we have lost a
real fund of beautiful and stimulating children's stories. And of
course, here too the general character of such stories throughout
the human race was preserved.
## p. 9580 (#612) ###########################################
9580
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
(1840-)
HE power of genius to discover new relations between famil-
iar facts is strikingly exemplified in Captain Alfred Thayer
Mahan's studies of the influence of sea power upon history.
The data cited in his works are common literary property; but the
conclusions drawn from them are a distinct contribution to historical
science. Captain Mahan is the first writer to demonstrate the deter-
mining force which maritime strength has exercised upon the fortunes
of individual nations, and consequently upon
the course of general history; and in that
field of work he is yet alone.
Technically, one of his representative
works, the 'Influence of Sea Power upon
History,' is but a naval history of Europe
from the restoration of the Stuarts to the
end of the American Revolution. But the
freedom with which it digresses on general
questions of naval policy and strategy, the
attention which it pays to the relation of
cause and effect between maritime events
and international politics, and the author's
literary method of treatment, place this
work outside the class of strictly profes-
sional writings, and entitle it already to be regarded as an American
classic.
ALFRED T. MAHAN
The contents of Captain Mahan's great studies of naval history
were originally given forth in a course of lectures delivered before
the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island; and Captain Ma-
han's prime object, in establishing the thesis that maritime strength
is a determining factor in the prosperity of nations, was to reinforce
his argument that the future interests of the United States require a
departure from the traditional American policy of neglect of naval-
military affairs. Captain Mahan has maintained that, as openings to
immigration and enterprise in North America and Australia diminish,
a demand will arise for a more settled government in the disordered
semi-barbarous States of Central and South America. He lays down
the proposition that stability of institutions is necessary to commer-
cial intercourse; and that a demand for such stability can hardly
## p. 9581 (#613) ###########################################
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
9581
be met without the intervention of interested civilized nations. Thus
international complications may be fairly anticipated; and the date
of their advent will be precipitated by the completion of a canal
through the Central-American isthmus. The strategic conditions of
the Mediterranean will be reproduced in the Caribbean Sea, and in
the international struggle for the control of the new highway of
commerce the United States will have the advantage of geographical
position. He points out that the carrying trade of the United States.
is at present insignificant, only because the opening of the West
since the Civil War has made maritime undertakings less profitable
than the development of the internal resources of the country. It is
thus shown to be merely a question of time when American capital
will again seek the ocean; and Captain Mahan urges that the United
States should seek to guard the interests of the future by building
up a strong military navy, and fortifying harbors commanding the
Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea.
Captain Mahan's biography is simple and professional.
He was
born September 27th, 1840. A graduate of the U. S. Naval Academy,
he served in the Union navy as a lieutenant throughout the Civil
War, and was president of the Naval War College from 1886 to 1889
and from 1890 to 1893. He has been a voluminous writer on his
peculiar subject or its closely kindred topics. Besides the work al-
ready mentioned, his writings include The Gulf and Inland Waters'
(1883); Life of Admiral Farragut' (1892); and 'Influence of Sea
Power upon the French Revolution and Empire' (1892), a continuation
of the Influence of Sea Power upon History. ' He is not a brilliant
stylist, but possesses a clear and solid literary technique; and even
in dealing with naval science as well as naval episodes, he holds the
attention with the serious merits of a descriptive historian.
THE IMPORTANCE OF CRUISERS AND OF STRONG FLEETS
IN WAR
From The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. ' Copyright 1890,
by Captain A. T. Mahan. Reprinted by permission of the author, and
of Little, Brown & Co. , publishers.
THE
HE English, notwithstanding their heavy loss in the Four
Days' Battle, were at sea again within two months, much
to the surprise of the Dutch; and on the 4th of August
another severe fight was fought off the North Foreland, ending
in the complete defeat of the latter, who retired to their own
coasts. The English followed, and effected an entrance into
## p. 9582 (#614) ###########################################
9582
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
one of the Dutch harbors, where they destroyed a large fleet
of merchantmen as well as a town of some importance. Toward
the end of 1666 both sides [England and Holland] were tired
of the war, which was doing great harm to trade, and weaken-
ing both navies to the advantage of the growing sea power of
France. Negotiations looking toward peace were opened; but
Charles II. , ill disposed to the United Provinces, confident that
the growing pretensions of Louis XIV. to the Spanish Nether-
lands would break up the existing alliance between Holland and
France, and relying also upon the severe reverses suffered at sea
by the Dutch, was exacting and haughty in his demands. To
justify and maintain this line of conduct he should have kept
up his fleet, the prestige of which had been so advanced by its
victories. Instead of that, poverty, the result of extravagance
and of his home policy, led him to permit it to decline; ships in
large numbers were laid up; and he readily adopted an opinion
which chimed in with his penury, and which, as it has had advo-
cates at all periods of sea history, should be noted and con-
demned here. This opinion, warmly opposed by Monk, was:—
"That as the Dutch were chiefly supported by trade, as the sup-
ply of their navy depended upon trade, and as experience showed,
nothing provoked the people so much as injuring their trade, his
Majesty should therefore apply himself to this, which would effectu-
ally humble them, at the same time that it would less exhaust the
English than fitting out such mighty fleets as had hitherto kept the
sea every summer. . . Upon these motives the King took a
fatal resolution of laying up his great ships, and keeping only a few
frigates on the cruise. "
a
In consequence of this economical theory of carrying on
war, the Grand Pensionary of Holland, De Witt, who had the
year before caused soundings of the Thames to be made, sent
into the river, under De Ruyter, a force of sixty or seventy ships
of the line, which on the 14th of June, 1667, went up as high
as Gravesend, destroying ships at Chatham and in the Medway,
and taking possession of Sheerness. The light of the fires could
be seen from London; and the Dutch fleet remained in possession
of the mouth of the river until the end of the month. Under
this blow, following as it did upon the great plague and the
great fire of London, Charles consented to peace, which was
signed July 31st, 1667, and is known as the Peace of Breda. The
most lasting result of the war was the transfer of New York and
## p. 9583 (#615) ###########################################
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
9583
New Jersey to England, thus joining her northern and southern
colonies in North America.
commerce.
Before going on again with the general course of the history
of the times, it will be well to consider for a moment the theory
which worked so disastrously for England in 1667; that, namely,
of maintaining a sea war mainly by preying upon the enemy's
This plan, which involves only the maintenance of a
few swift cruisers and can be backed by the spirit of greed in a
nation, fitting out privateers without direct expense to the State,
possesses the specious attractions which economy always presents.
The great injury done to the wealth and prosperity of the enemy
is also undeniable; and although to some extent his merchant
ships can shelter themselves ignobly under a foreign flag while
the war lasts, this guerre de course, as the French call it,- this
commerce-destroying, to use our own phrase,-must, if in itself
successful, greatly embarrass the foreign government and distress
its people. Such a war, however, cannot stand alone: it must be
supported, to use the military phrase; unsubstantial and evanes-
cent in itself, it cannot reach far from its base. That base must
be either home ports or else some solid outpost of the national
power on the shore or the sea; a distant dependency or a
powerful fleet. Failing such support, the cruiser can only dash
out hurriedly a short distance from home; and its blows, though
painful, cannot be fatal. It was not the policy of 1667, but
Cromwell's powerful fleets of ships of the line in 1652, that shut
the Dutch merchantmen in their ports and caused the grass to
grow in the streets of Amsterdam. When, instructed by the suffer-
ing of that time, the Dutch kept large fleets afloat through two
exhausting wars, though their commerce suffered greatly, they
bore up the burden of the strife against England and France
united. Forty years later, Louis XIV. was driven by exhaustion.
to the policy adopted by Charles II. through parsimony. Then
were the days of the great French privateers,- Jean Bart, For-
bin, Duguay-Trouin, Du Casse, and others. The regular fleets of
the French navy were practically withdrawn from the ocean dur-
ing the great War of the Spanish Succession (1702-1712). The
French naval historian says:
――――
"Unable to renew the naval armaments, Louis XIV. increased the
number of cruisers upon the more frequented seas, especially the
Channel and the German Ocean [not far from home, it will be noticed].
## p. 9584 (#616) ###########################################
9584
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
In these different spots the cruisers were always in a position to inter-
cept or hinder the movements of transports laden with troops, and of
the numerous convoys carrying supplies of all kinds. In these seas,
in the centre of the commercial and political world, there is always
work for cruisers. Notwithstanding the difficulties they met, owing
to the absence of large friendly fleets, they served advantageously the
cause of the two peoples [French and Spanish]. These cruisers, in
the face of the Anglo-Dutch power, needed good luck, boldness, and
skill. These three conditions were not lacking to our seamen; but
then, what chiefs and what captains they had! "
The English historian, on the other hand, while admitting
how severely the people and commerce of England suffered from
the cruisers, bitterly reflecting at times upon the administration,
yet refers over and over again to the increasing prosperity of
the whole country, and especially of its commercial part. In the
preceding war, on the contrary, from 1689 to 1697, when France
sent great fleets to sea and disputed the supremacy of the ocean,
how different the result! The same English writer says of that
time:-
"With respect to our trade, it is certain that we suffered infinitely
more, not merely than the French, for that was to be expected from
the greater number of our merchant ships, but than we ever did in
any former war.
This proceeded in great measure from the
vigilance of the French, who carried on the war in a piratical way.
It is out of all doubt that, taking all together, our traffic suffered
excessively; our merchants were many of them ruined. "
Macaulay says of this period: "During many months of 1693
the English trade with the Mediterranean had been interrupted
almost entirely. There was no chance that a merchantman
from London or Amsterdam would, if unprotected, reach the Pil-
lars of Hercules without being boarded by a French privateer;
and the protection of armed vessels was not easily obtained. "
Why? Because the vessels of England's navy were occupied
watching the French navy, and this diversion of them from the
cruisers and privateers constituted the support which a commerce-
destroying war must have. A French historian, speaking of the
same period in England (1696), says: "The state of the finances
was deplorable: money was scarce, maritime insurance thirty
per cent. , the Navigation Act was virtually suspended, and the
English shipping reduced to the necessity of sailing under the
Swedish and Danish flags. " Half a century later the French
## p. 9585 (#617) ###########################################
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
9585
government was again reduced, by long neglect of the navy, to
a cruising warfare. With what results? First, the French his-
torian says:
"From June 1756 to June 1760, French privateers
captured from the English more than twenty-five hundred mer-
chantmen. In 1761, though France had not, so to speak, a single
ship of the line at sea, and though the English had taken two
hundred and forty of. our privateers, their comrades still took
eight hundred and twelve vessels. But," he goes on to say,
"the prodigious growth of the English shipping explains the
number of these prizes. " In other words, the suffering involved
to England in such numerous captures, which must have caused
great individual injury and discontent, did not really prevent the
growing prosperity of the State and of the community at large.
The English naval historian, speaking of the same period, says:
"While the commerce of France was nearly destroyed, the trad-
ing fleet of England covered the seas. Every year her com-
merce was increasing; the money which the war carried out was
returned by the produce of her industry. Eight thousand mer-
chant vessels were employed by the English merchants. " And
again, summing up the results of the war, after stating the
immense amount of specie brought into the kingdom by foreign
conquests, he says: "The trade of England increased gradually
every year; and such a scene of national prosperity, while waging
a long, bloody, and costly war, was never before shown by any
people in the world. "
On the other hand, the historian of the French navy, speaking
of an earlier phase of the same wars, says: "The English fleets,
having nothing to resist them, swept the seas. Our privateers
and single cruisers, having no fleet to keep down the abundance
of their enemies, ran short careers. Twenty thousand French
seamen lay in English prisons. When, on the other hand, in
the War of the American Revolution, France resumed the policy
of Colbert and of the early reign of Louis XIV. , and kept large
battle fleets afloat, the same result again followed as in the days
of Tourville. " "For the first time," says the Annual Register, for-
getting or ignorant of the experience of 1693, and remembering
only the glories of the later wars, "English merchant ships were
driven to take refuge under foreign flags. " Finally, in quitting
this part of the subject, it may be remarked that in the Island of
Martinique the French had a powerful distant dependency upon
which to base a cruising warfare; and during the Seven Years'
XVI-600
## p. 9586 (#618) ###########################################
9586
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
War, as afterward during the First Empire, it, with Guadaloupe,
was the refuge of numerous privateers. "The records of the
English admiralty raise the losses of the English in the West
Indies during the first years of the Seven Years' War to four-
teen hundred merchantmen taken or destroyed. " The English
fleet was therefore directed against the islands, both of which
fell, involving a loss to the trade of France greater than all the
depredations of her cruisers on the English commerce, besides
breaking up the system; but in the war of 1778 the great fleets
protected the islands, which were not even threatened at any
time.
So far we have been viewing the effect of a purely cruis-
ing warfare, not based upon powerful squadrons, only upon that
particular part of the enemy's strength against which it is theo-
retically directed,-upon his commerce and general wealth, upon
the sinews of war. The evidence seems to show that even for its
own special ends such a mode of war is inconclusive,—worrying
but not deadly; it might almost be said that it causes needless
suffering. What, however, is the effect of this policy upon the
general ends of the war, to which it is one of the means and to
which it is subsidiary? How, again, does it react upon the people
that practice it? As the historical evidences will come up in
detail from time to time, it need here only be summarized.
The result to England in the days of Charles II. has been
seen, her coast insulted, her shipping burned almost within
sight of her capital. In the War of the Spanish Succession,
when the control of Spain was the military object, while the
French depended upon a cruising war against commerce, the
navies of England and Holland, unopposed, guarded the coasts
of the peninsula, blocked the port of Toulon, forced the French
succors to cross the Pyrenees, and by keeping open the sea high-
way, neutralized the geographical nearness of France to the seat
of war.
Their fleets seized Gibraltar, Barcelona, and Minorca;
and co-operating with the Austrian army, failed by little of redu-
cing Toulon. In the Seven Years' War the English fleets seized,
or aided in seizing, all the most valuable colonies of France and
Spain, and made frequent descents on the French coast.
The War of the American Revolution affords no lesson, the
fleets being nearly equal. The next most striking instance to
Americans is the War of 1812. Everybody knows how our pri-
vateers swarmed over the seas; and that from the smallness of
-
## p. 9587 (#619) ###########################################
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
9587
our navy the war was essentially, indeed solely, a cruising war.
Except upon the lakes, it is doubtful if more than two of our
ships at any time acted together. The injury done to English
commerce, thus unexpectedly attacked by a distant foe which had
been undervalued, may be fully conceded; but on the one hand,
the American cruisers were powerfully supported by the French
fleet, which, being assembled in larger or smaller bodies in the
many ports under the Emperor's control from Antwerp to Venice,
tied the fleets of England to blockade duty; and on the other
hand, when the fall of the Emperor released them, our coasts
were insulted in every direction, the Chesapeake entered and con-
trolled, its shores wasted, the Potomac ascended, and Washington
burned. The Northern frontier was kept in a state of alarm,
though there, squadrons absolutely weak but relatively strong
sustained the general defense; while in the South the Mississippi
was entered unopposed, and New Orleans barely saved. When
negotiations for peace were opened, the bearing of the English
toward the American envoys was not that of men who felt their
country to be threatened with an unbearable evil.
The late Civil War, with the cruises of the Alabama and
Sumter and their consorts, revived the tradition of commerce-
destroying. In so far as this is one means to a general end, and
is based upon a navy otherwise powerful, it is well; but we need
not expect to see the feats of those ships repeated in the face of
a great sea power. In the first place, those cruises were power-
fully supported by the determination of the United States to
blockade, not only the chief centres of Southern trade, but every
inlet of the coast, thus leaving few ships available for pursuit;
in the second place, had there been ten of those cruisers where
there was one, they would not have stopped the incursion in
Southern waters of the Union fleet, which penetrated to every
point accessible from the sea; and in the third place, the un-
deniable injury, direct and indirect, inflicted upon individuals
and upon one branch of the nation's industry (and how high that
shipping industry stands in the writer's estimation need not be
repeated), did not in the least influence or retard the event of
the war.
Such injuries, unaccompanied by others, are more irri-
tating than weakening. On the other hand, will any refuse to
admit that the work of the great Union fleets powerfully modified
and hastened an end which was probably inevitable in any case?
As a sea power the South then occupied the place of France in
## p. 9588 (#620) ###########################################
9588
ALFRED THAYER MAHAN
the wars we have been considering, while the situation of the
North resembled that of England; and as in France, the suffer-
ers in the Confederacy were not a class, but the government and
the nation at large.
It is not the taking of individual ships or convoys, be they
few or many, that strikes down the money power of a nation: it
is the possession of that overbearing power on the sea which
drives the enemy's flag from it, or allows it to appear only as a
fugitive; and which, by controlling the great common, closes the
highways by which commerce moves to and from the enemy's
shores. This overbearing power can only be exercised by great
navies; and by them (on the broad sea) less efficiently now than
in the days when the neutral flag had not its present immunity.
It is not unlikely that in the event of a war between maritime
nations, an attempt may be made by the one having a great
sea power, and wishing to break down its enemy's commerce, to
interpret the phrase "effective blockade" in the manner that
best suits its interests at the time; to assert that the speed and
disposal of its ships make the blockade effective at much greater
distances and with fewer ships than formerly. The determination
of such a question will depend, not upon the weaker belligerent,
but upon neutral powers: it will raise the issue between bel-
ligerent and neutral rights; and if the belligerent have a vastly
overpowering navy he may carry his point,-just as England,
when possessing the mastery of the seas, long refused to admit
the doctrine of the neutral flag covering the goods.
## p. 9589 (#621) ###########################################
9589
-
MOSES MAIMONIDES
(1135-1204)
BY RABBI GOTTHEIL
T
HE Conclusion of the whole matter is, Go either to the right,
my heart, or go to the left; but believe all that Rabbi Moses
ben Maimon has believed, the last of the Gaonim [religious
teachers] in time, but the first in rank. " In such manner did the
most celebrated Jewish poet in Provence voice in his quaint way the
veneration with which the Jewish Aristotle of Cordova was regarded.
For well-nigh four hundred years, the descendants of Isaac had lived
in the Spanish Peninsula the larger life opened up to them by the
sons of Ishmael. They had with ardor cultivated their spiritual pos-
sessions the only ones they had been able to save-as they passed
through shipwreck and all manner of ill fortune from the fair lands
of the East. The height of their spiritual fortune was manifested in
this second Moses, whom they did not scruple to compare with the
first bearer of that name.
-
Abu Amram Musa ibn Ibrahim Ubeid Allah, as his full Arabic
name ran, was born in the city of Cordova, "the Mecca of the West,"
on March 30th, 1135. His father was learned in Talmudic lore; and
from him the young student must have gotten his strong love of
knowledge. At an early period he developed a taste for the exact
sciences and for philosophy. He read with zeal not only the works
of the Mohammedan scholastics, but also those of the Greek philoso-
phers in such dress as they had been made accessible by their
Arabian translators. In this way his mind, which by nature ran in
logical and systematic grooves, was strengthened in its bent; and he
acquired that distaste for mysticism and vagueness which is so char-
acteristic of his literary labors. He went so far as to abhor poetry,
the best of which he declared to be false, since it was founded upon
pure invention - and this too in a land which had produced such
noble expressions of the Hebrew and Arab Muse.
It is strange that this man, whose character was that of a sage,
and who was revered for his person as well as for his books, should
have led such an unquiet life, and have written his works so full
of erudition with the staff of the wanderer in his hand. For his
peaceful studies were rudely disturbed in his thirteenth year by the
## p. 9590 (#622) ###########################################
9590
MOSES MAIMONIDES
invasion of the Almohades, or Mohammedan Unitarians, from Africa.
They not only captured Cordova, but set up a form of religious per-
secution which happily is not always characteristic of Islamic piety.
Maimonides's father wandered to Almeria on the coast; and then
(1159) straight into the lion's jaws at Fez in Africa,-a line of conduct
hardly intelligible in one who had fled for the better exercise of the
dictates of conscience. So pressing did the importunities of the Almo-
had fanatics become, that together with his family Maimonides was
compelled to don the turban, and to live for several years the life of
an Arabic Marrano. This blot upon his fair fame—if blot it be - he
tried to excuse in two treatises, which may be looked upon as his
"apologia pro vita sua": one on the subject of conversion in general
(1160), and another addressed to his co-religionists in Southern Arabia
on the coming of the Messiah. But the position was an untenable
one; and in 1165 we find Maimonides again on the road, reaching
Accho, Jerusalem, Hebron, and finally Egypt. Under the milder rule
of the Ayyubite Caliphs, no suppression of his belief was necessary.
Maimonides settled with his brother in old Cairo or Fostat; gaining
his daily pittance, first as a jeweler, and then in the practice of medi-
cine; the while he continued in the study of philosophy and the elab-
oration of the great works upon which his fame reposes. In 1177 he
was recognized as the head of the Jewish community of Egypt, and
soon afterwards was placed upon the list of court physicians to Sala-
din. He breathed his last on December 13th, 1204, and his body was
taken to Tiberias for burial.
Perhaps no fairer presentation of the principles and practices of
Rabbinical Judaism can be cited than that contained in the three
chief works of Maimonides. His clear-cut mind gathered the various
threads which Jewish theology and life had spun since the closing of
the Biblical canon, and wove them into such a fabric that a new
period may fitly be said to have been ushered in. The Mishnah had
become the law-book of the Diaspora: in it was to be found the sys-
tem of ordinances and practices which had been developed up to the
second century A. D. In the scholastic discussions in which the Jew-
ish schoolmen had indulged their wit and their ingenuity, much of
its plain meaning had become obscured. At the age of twenty-three
Maimonides commenced to work upon a commentary to this Mishnah,
which took him seven years to complete. It was written in Arabic,
and very fitly called The Illumination'; for here the philosophic
training of its author was brought to bear upon the dry legal mass,
and to give it life as well as light. The induction of philosophy into
law is seen to even more peculiar advantage in his Mishnah Tōrāh
(Repeated Law). The scholastic discussions upon the Mishnah had in
the sixth century been put into writing, and had become that vast
## p. 9591 (#623) ###########################################
MOSES MAIMONIDES
9591
medley of thought, that kaleidoscope of schoolroom life, which is
known by the name of Talmud. Based upon the slender framework
of the Mishnah, the vast edifice had been built up with so little plan
and symmetry that its various ramifications could only be followed
with the greatest difficulty and with infinite exertion. In turn, the
Talmud had supplanted the Mishnah as the rule of life and the direct-
ive of religious observance. Even before the time of Maimonides.
scholars had tried their hand at putting order into this great chaos;
but none of their efforts had proved satisfactory. For ten years
Maimonides worked and produced this digest, in which he arranged
in scientific order all the material which a Jewish jurist and theo-
logian might be called upon to use. Though this digest was received
with delight by the Jews of Spain, many were found who looked upon
Maimonides's work as an attempt to crystallize into unchangeable law
the fluctuating streams of tradition. The same objection was made
to his attempt to formulate into a creed the purely theological ideas
of the Judaism of his day. His 'Thirteen Articles' brought on a war
of strong opposition; and though in the end, the fame of their author
conquered a place for them even in the Synagogue Ritual, they were
never accepted by the entire Jewry. They remained the presentation
of an individual scholar.
But his chief philosophical work, his 'Guide of the Perplexed'
(Dalalat al Hāïrīn), carried him still further; and for centuries fairly
divided the Jewish camp into two parties. The battle between the
Maimonists and anti-Maimonists waged fiercely in Spain and Provence.
The bitterness of the strife is represented in the two inscriptions
which were placed upon his tombstone. The first read:-
"Here lies a man, and still a man;
If thou wert a man, angels of heaven
Must have overshadowed thy mother. "
This was effaced and a second one placed in its stead:
"Here lies Moses Maimuni, the excommunicated heretic. "
In the Guide of the Perplexed' Maimonides has also produced a
work which was "epoch-making" in Jewish philosophy. It is the best
attempt ever made by a Jew to combine philosophy with theology.
Aristotle was known to Maimonides through Al-Farābi and Ibn Sînâ
(Avicenna); and he is convinced that the Stagyrite is to be followed
in certain things, as he is that the Bible must be followed in others.
In fact, there can be no divergence between the two; for both have
the same end in view,-to prove the existence of God. The aim of
metaphysics is to perfect man intellectually; the same aim is at the
core of Talmudic Judaism. Reason and revelation must speak the
―
## p. 9592 (#624) ###########################################
9592
MOSES MAIMONIDES
-
same language; and by a peculiar kind of subtle exegesis – which
provoked much opposition, as it seemed to do violence to the plain
wording - he is able to find his philosophical ideas in the text of
the Bible. But he is careful to limit his acquiescence in Aristotle's
teaching to things which occur below the sphere of the moon. He
was afraid of coming into contact with the foundations of religious
belief, and of having to deny the existence of wonders. The Bible
teaches that matter was created, and the arguments advanced in favor
of both the Platonic and Aristotelian views he looks upon as insuffi-
cient. The Jewish belief that God brought into existence not only the
form but also the matter of the world, Maimonides looks upon much
as an article of faith. The same is true of the belief in a resurrec-
tion. He adduces so little proof for this dogma that the people of
his day were ready to charge him with heresy.
Maimonides is able to present twenty-five ontological arguments
for his belief in the existence, unity, and incorporeality of God. What
strikes one most is the almost colorless conception of the Deity at
which he arrives. In his endeavor to remove the slightest shadow of
corporeality in this conception, he is finally led to deny that any
positive attributes can be posited of God. Such attributes would only
be "accidentia"; and any such "accidentia" would limit the idea
of oneness. Even attributes which would merely show the relation of
the Divine Being to other beings are excluded; because he is so far
removed from things non-Divine, as to make all comparison impossi-
ble. Even existence, when spoken of in regard to him, is not an
attribute. In his school language, the "essentia" of God involves
his "existentia. " We have therefore to rely entirely upon negative
attributes in trying to get a clear concept of the Deity.
If the Deity is so far removed, how then is he to act upon the
world? Maimonides supposes that this medium is to be found in the
world of the spheres. Of these spheres there are nine: "the all-
encompassing sphere, that of the fixed stars, and those of the seven
planets. " Each sphere is presided over by an intelligence which is
its motive power. These intelligences are called angels, in the Bible.
The highest intelligence is immaterial. It is the nous poiētikós, the
ever-active intellect. It is the power which gives form to all things,
and makes that which was potential really existent. "Prophecy is
an emanation sent forth by the Divine Being through the medium of
the active intellect, in the first instance to man's rational faculty and
then to his imaginative faculty. The lower grade of prophecy comes
by means of dreams, the higher through visions accorded the prophet
in a waking condition. The symbolical actions of the prophets are
nothing more than states of the soul. " High above all the prophets
Maimonides places Moses, to whom he attributes a special power, by
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MOSES MAIMONIDES
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means of which the active intellect worked upon him without the
mediation of the imagination.
The psychological parts of the 'Guide' present in a Jewish garb
the Peripatetic philosophy as expounded by Alexander of Aphrodisia.
Reason exists in the powers of the soul, but only potentially as latent
reason (noûs húlikos). It has the power to assimilate immaterial forms
which come from the active reason. It thus becomes acquired or
developed reason (noûs epíktētos); and by still further assimilation it
becomes gradually an entity separable from the body, so that at
death it can live on unattached to the body.
