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On more than one occasion he gives vent to his impatience with that poetic philosopher, and he blames him principally for two faults. Choosing to devote a whole book to one purely metaphysical topic, in itself not related to Judaism, Gabirol, we are told by Ibn Daud, gave expression to doctrines extremely dangerous to the Jewish religion.
Mahmud, in the same year, was under the necessity of marching again to Multan, which had revolted; but having soon reduced it, and cut off a great number of the chiefs, he brought Daud, the son of Nazir, the rebellious governor, prisoner to Ghazni, and imprisoned him in the fort of Gorci for life.
Ibn Daud as a Jew could not accept this solution, and so he cut the knot by saying that while it is true that matter cannot originate in the way in which the composite objects of the sublunar world come to be, it does not yet follow that it is absolutely ultimate and eternal. God alone is the ultimate and eternal; nothing else is.
It is not necessary for us to reproduce here his sketch of the philosophical views, as we know them sufficiently from our studies of Ibn Daud and Maimonides.
I thocht the precentor that was beatin' time lookit across at him twa-three times, he was roostin' an' roarin' at sic a rate. He sang at the pitch o' his voice Shud auld acquantance be forgot, An' never brocht to mind, an' syne gien me a great daud on the shuder wi' his elba, he says, "Sing quicker, Bawbie" For the days o' auld langsyne.
They are as old as Aristotle, and his successors grappled with them as best they could. There is still the question of the manner of the soul's survival. The same reasons which Ibn Daud brings forward against the possibility of the existence of many souls before the body, apply with equal cogency to their survival after death.
If a man has merits and demerits, his good and evil deeds are balanced against each other, and the surplus determines his reward or punishment according to its nature. The influence of Aristotle on Jewish thought, which began as early as Saadia and grew in intensity as the Aristotelian writings became better known, reached its high water mark in Ibn Daud, Maimonides and Gersonides.
Halevi is less consistent and more thorough, Ibn Daud is more consistent, because he fails to take account of real difficulties. In the final outcome of their respective analyses, Halevi maintains God's foreknowledge at the expense of absolute freedom, or rather he does not see that his admissions are fatal to the cause he endeavors to defend.
Ibn Daud has not a word to say about this, and it is one of the weak points religiously in his system as well as in that of Maimonides, which the critics and opponents of the latter did not fail to observe. Before leaving the problem of the soul Ibn Daud devotes a word to showing that metempsychosis is impossible.
"Here there is never anything to call a show. Even when Daûd el Barûdi married, there were no fine dresses. Every woman present wore the head-veil. I fain would try a Frankish hat myself; but the ladies will not let me curse their father!" "They fear to be outshone," put in Abdullah, and continued quickly, apprehending a fresh storm: "Now, as concerns Iskender, I have a project for thee.
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