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No merely logical argument, is his idea, can give us absolute certainty even in so fundamental a doctrine as the unity of God. Like Judah Halevi, Crescas took his inspiration from Algazali, whose point of view appealed to him more than that of Maimonides and Gersonides, who may be classed with Alfarabi, Avicenna and Averroes.
Its realized ideals in the various paths of human greatness have been more commanding, more many-sided, more holy, as Averroes is below Newton, Harun below Alfred, and Ali below St. Paul. Finally, the ideal life of all is far more elevating, far more majestic, far more inspiring, even as the life of the founder of Mohammedanism is below the life of the Founder of Christianity.
These schools produced, in the twelfth century, several distinguished men, among the most celebrated of whom were the learned Abenzoar and the famous Averroes. The former, equally profound in medicine, pharmacy, and surgery, lived, it is said, to the age of one hundred and thirty-five years. Some estimable works which he produced are still extant.
Then this savant, brought up in the school of one Sieur Averroes, entered into certain medical details, and declared that the loose life she had formerly led had for ever ruined her chance of obtaining offspring.
And at the end of the process a new intellect is produced in man, the Acquired Intellect. This alone is the immortal part of man and theoretical study creates it. Averroes believed that this Acquired Intellect exists separately in every individual so long only as the individual is alive. There is thus no individual immortality.
"It is our duty," he says, "to supply what the ancients have left incomplete, because we have entered into their labours, which, unless we are asses, can stimulate us to achieve better results"; Aristotle corrected the errors of earlier thinkers; Avicenna and Averroes have corrected Aristotle in some matters and have added much that is new; and so it will go on till the end of the world.
Reason, however, gradually became an independent power: orthodoxy did not reject reason when it coincided with tradition, but under the influence of Aristotelianism, especially as developed by Averroës, reason became a power opposed to faith. The essential point of the doctrine was that truth was twofold, according to faith and according to reason.
It is the Active Intellect, which combines in itself all immaterial forms and thinks them as it thinks itself. It is only in its individualized aspect that it becomes a potential intellect ready to receive all material forms. But what Averroes gains here he loses elsewhere. There are certain considerations which are fatal to his doctrine.
Averroes, an Arabian physician, places it in the imagination; Democritus ascribes it to little images, or representations, separated from the things themselves; Plato among the specific and concrete notions of the soul; Albertus to the superior influences, which continually flow from the sky, through many specific channels.
The discussion therefore in Hillel's work concerns the possible intellect, and here he ventures to disagree with Averroes and decides in favor of the possible intellect as a part of the soul and the subject of reward and punishment. Concerning the nature of reward and punishment after death opinions are divided. Some think that both reward and punishment are corporeal.
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