or his other writings, entered heartily into the
controversies of the day, discussed the claims of a new aspirant to the
dignity of Messiah, encouraged the weaker brethren who fell under
disfavor because they had been compelled to become pretended converts to
Islam, showed common-sense and strong intellectual grasp in every line
he wrote, and combined in his dealings with all questions the rarely
associated qualities, toleration and devotion to the truth. Yet he felt
that his life's work was still incomplete. He loved truth, but truth for
him had two aspects: there was truth as revealed by God, there was truth
which God left man to discover for himself. In the mind of Maimonides,
Moses and Aristotle occupied pedestals side by side. In the "Strong
Hand," he had codified and given orderly arrangement to Judaism as
revealed in Bible and tradition; he would now examine its relations to
reason, would compare its results with the data of philosophy. This he
did in his "Guide of the Perplexed" (_Moreh Nebuchim_). Maimonides here
differed fundamentally from his immediate predecessors. Jehuda Halevi,
in his _Cuzari_, was poet more than philosopher. The _Cuzari_ was a
dialogue based on the three principles, that God is revealed in history,
that Jerusalem is the centre of the world, and that Israel is to the
nations as the heart to the limbs. Jehuda Halevi supported these ideas
with arguments deduced from the philosophy of his day, he used reason as
the handmaid of theology. Maimonides, however, like Saadiah, recognized
a higher function for reason. He placed reason on the same level as
revelation, and then demonstrated that his faith and his reason taught
identical truths. His work, the "Guide of the Perplexed," written in
Arabic in about the year 1190, is based, on the one hand, on the
Aristotelian system as expounded by Arabian thinkers, and, on the other
hand, on a firm belief in Scripture and tradition. With a masterly hand,
Maimonides summarized the teachings of Aristotle and the doctrines of
Moses and the Rabbis. Between these two independent bodies of truths he
found, not contradiction, but agreement, and he reconciled them in a way
that satisfied so many minds that the "Guide" was translated into Hebrew
twice during his life-time, and was studied by Mohammedans and by
Christians such as Thomas Aquinas. With general readers, the third part
was the most popular. In this part Maimonides offered rational
explanations of the ce