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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.
Practice signifies to keep away as far as possible from things of sense, which are foreign to the soul and might injure it. What more particularly the things are which are beneficial to the soul, and what are injurious, we learn from Gabirol's ethical treatise. Man's soul has a higher and a lower nature.
This means that when the lower soul succeeds in controlling the reason, the result is evil and sin, and man is driven out of the Garden, i. e., is excluded from his angelic purity and becomes a corporeal being. It is clear from all this that Gabirol's omission of all reference to Jewish dogma in the "Fons Vitæ" was purely methodological.
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."
While it is true that Gabirol's influence on subsequent Jewish philosophy is slight at most we find it in Moses and Abraham ibn Ezra, Abraham ibn Daud and Joseph ibn Zaddik traces of his ideas are met with in the mysticism of the Kabbala. Gabirol's "Fons Vitæ" is a peculiar combination of logical formalism with mystic obscurity, or profundity, according to one's point of view.
In the "Fons Vitæ" Gabirol tells us that matter receives form from the First Essence through the medium of the Will, which latter therefore, as it bestows form upon matter, sits in it and rests upon it. Hence it is clear that the Throne of Glory which is above the Intelligence is nothing else than Gabirol's matter.
Evidently Ibn Zaddik was not ready to go all the length of Gabirol's emanationism and Neo-Platonic mysticism. The Aristotelian ideas, of which there are many in the "Microcosm," are probably not derived from a study of Aristotle's works, but from secondary sources. This we may safely infer from the way in which he uses or interprets them.
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.
Ibn Zaddik does refer to the doctrine of the divine Will, which plays such an important rôle in the philosophy of Gabirol and of the Pseudo-Empedoclean writings, which are supposed to have been Gabirol's source. But here, too, the negative side of Ibn Zaddik's doctrine is developed at length, while the positive side is barely alluded to in a hint.
At any rate it is clear from the little that is contained on the Divine Will in the "Fons Vitæ" that the Will forms an important element in Gabirol's philosophy. This is the more remarkable because it is not an essential element in Neo-Platonism, upon which Gabirol's system is based. Nay, the doctrine of a divine will scarcely has any place in the form of emanation taught by Plotinus.
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