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It is of historical interest to us to know that Moses ibn Ezra, so famous as a poet, was interested in philosophy, and that the views which appealed to him were those of Ibn Gabirol, whose "Fountain of Life" he knew, and from which he quotes a celebrated mystical passage. A few details will suffice to make this clear.
To be sure, there are arguments on the other side, which would give chronological priority to Bahya over Gabirol, but without going into the details of this minute and difficult discussion, it may be said generally that many of the similarities in thought and expression between the two ethical works of Gabirol and Bahya rather point in favor of the view here adopted, namely, that Bahya borrowed from Gabirol, while the rest prove nothing for either side.
There is no doubt that this emphasis is due to Neo-Platonic influence, some of which may have come to Bahya from Gabirol, the rest probably from their common sources. We see, Bahya begins his discussion of the unity of God, that the causes are fewer than their effects, the causes of the causes still fewer, and so on, until when we reach the top there is only one.
We have followed its ascending curve from Saadia through Gabirol, Bahya and Ibn Daud to its highest point in Maimonides, and we likewise traced its descent through Gersonides, Crescas and Albo. We took account of its essential nature as being a serious and conscientious attempt to define a Jewish Weltanschauung in the midst of conflicting claims of religions and philosophies.
Gabirol does not give us any test by which we can tell whether a given act or feeling belongs to the lower or higher nature except to say that the appetites are diseases of the body which must be cured; that they do not belong to the rational soul, and to satisfy them is not the attainment of a good.
For though Ibn Ezra favors the philological method as the best way to arrive at the true meaning of Scripture, and decries allegory as well as Midrash when pushed too far, and though his commentary is for the most part based upon the philological method of interpretation, he was too much a child of his age to be able to refrain from finding in the Bible views akin to those he learned from Gabirol, the Brethren of Purity and what other philosophical literature of the Arabs he read and was influenced by.
After Maimonides Hebrew takes the place of Arabic, and in addition to the new works composed, the commentaries on the "Guide" which were now written in plenty and the philosophico-exegetical works on the Bible in the Maimonidean spirit, the ancient classics of Saadia, Bahya, Gabirol, Halevi, Ibn Zaddik, Ibn Daud and Maimonides himself had to be translated from Arabic into Hebrew.
Finally, man has a still higher function than discursive thought. The latter has to search and to pass from premise to conclusion, whereas the apprehension of the intelligence takes place "without seeking, without effort, and without any other cause except its own essence, because it is full of perfection." In other words, it is immediate intellectual intuition of which Gabirol speaks here.
Ibn Gabirol wrote such epistles, but the fact remains that we know of no love verses from his hand; perhaps this confirms the tradition that he was the victim of an unrequited affection. Thus the new form opens not with Ibn Gabirol, but with Samuel ibn Nagrela.
But Gabirol does not promise a knowledge of the Most High even through this royal road of ecstasy, unless we suppose that in the promise of seeing in universal matter the wonder of all wonders there may be a covert allusion to a glimpse of the deepest secret of all, the essence of God.
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