chapter ten

of his prophecies; for the sake of the righteous who is closely related to him, as Lot was saved for the sake of Abraham; or in order to make the punishment more severe later, as in the case of Pharaoh.

That there is another world after this one in which man is rewarded and punished can be proved from reason, from Scripture and from tradition.[74] It is not likely from what we know of God's wisdom and goodness that the measure of happiness intended for the soul is what it gets in this world. For every good here is mixed with evil, the latter even predominating. No one is really content and at peace in this world even if he has reached the top of the ladder of prosperity and honor. There must be a reason for this, which is that the soul has an intuitional longing for the other world which is destined for it. There are many things from which the soul is bidden to abstain, such as theft, adultery, and so on, which it desires, and abstention from which causes it pain. Surely there must be reward awaiting the soul for this suffering. Often the soul suffers hatred, persecution and even death for pursuing justice as she is bidden to do. Surely she will be rewarded. Even when a person is punished with death for a crime committed in this world, the same death is inflicted for one crime as for ten crimes. Hence there must be another world where all inequalities are adjusted.

It is also evident that the men of the Bible believed in a hereafter. Else why should Isaac have consented to be sacrificed, or why should God have expected it? The same applies to Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah, who preferred to be thrown into the fiery furnace rather than fall down in worship before the golden image of Nebuchadnezzar; and to Daniel who was thrown into the den of lions for disobeying the order of the king and praying to God. They would not have done this if they did not believe in another world, where they would be rewarded for their sufferings in this one.

Tradition and the Rabbinical literature are filled with reference to a future world. We need mention only one or two. In the Ethics of the Fathers (ch. 4) we read that this world is like the vestibule to the other world. Another statement in the Talmudic treatise Berakot (p. 17a) reads that "in the world to come there is no eating and drinking, nor giving in marriage, nor buying and selling, but the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads and enjoy the splendor of the Shekinah."

With regard to the condition of the soul after death and the nature of reward and punishment in the next world, there is a variety of opinions. Those who hold that the soul is corporeal or that it is an accident of the body believe it is destroyed with the death of the body. We have already refuted their opinion. Others, like the Platonists, the Dualists and the Pantheists, who believe in the pre-existence of the soul either as a separate entity or as a part of God, hold that after the death of the body the soul returns to its original condition. Our belief as stated above (p. 37) is opposed to this. But there are some calling themselves Jews who believe in metempsychosis, that the soul migrates from one person to another and even from man to beast, and that in this way it is punished for its sins and purged. They see a confirmation of their view in the fact that some persons exhibit qualities which are characteristic of lower animals. But this is absurd. The soul and the body form a natural unit, the one being adapted to the other. A human body cannot unite with the soul of an animal, nor an animal body with a human soul. They try to account by their theory for the suffering of little children, who could not have sinned in their own person. But we have already explained that the suffering of children is not in the nature of punishment, but with a view to subsequent reward, and they must admit that the first placing of the soul in the body and giving it commandments is not in the nature of compensation for any past merit, but with a view to later reward. Why not then explain the suffering of children in the same way?[75]

As the body and the soul form a natural unit during life and a man's conduct is the combined effort of the two constituent parts of his being, it stands to reason that future reward and punishment should be imposed upon body and soul in combination. Hence the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, which is alluded to in the Bible and made into a religious dogma by the Rabbis, has support also in the reason.[76] Many objections have been advanced against it, but they can be easily answered. The strongest objection might seem to be that which attempts to show that resurrection is a logical contradiction. The argument is that the elements making up a given body during life find their way after the death of the person into the body of another, to which they are assimilated and of which they form a part. Hence it is impossible to resurrect two bodies out of the material common to both. But this argument is untrue to fact. Every human body has its own matter, which never enters into the composition of any other body. When the person dies and the body decomposes, each element returns to its place in nature, where it is kept until the resurrection.

But there is another event which will happen to Israel before the time of the resurrection. In accordance with the promises of the Prophets we believe that Israel will be delivered from exile by the Messiah.[77] Reason also supports this belief, for God is righteous, and since he has placed us in exile partly as a punishment for wrongdoing, partly for the purpose of trying us, there must be a limit to both.

Messiah the son of David will come, will deliver Jerusalem from the enemy and settle there with his people. When all the believing Israelites have been gathered from all the nations to the land of Palestine, then will come the resurrection. The Temple will be rebuilt, the light of the Shekinah will rest upon it, and the spirit of prophecy will be vouchsafed to all Israel, young and old, master and servant. This blessed period will last until the end of time, _i. e._, until this world will give place to the next, which is the place of reward and punishment.

We describe the future habitation and status of the soul as Garden of Eden (Paradise) and Gehenna.[78] The former expression is intended to suggest happiness, there being nothing pleasanter in the world than a garden. The term Gehenna is associated in the Bible with Tofteh, which was a place of impurity not far from the Temple. In reality, however, God will create a substance which will combine light and heat in such a way that the righteous will enjoy the light only, while the wicked will be tortured by the heat. All this Saadia infers from Biblical passages.

There will be no eating and drinking in the next world, and hence no need of a heaven and an earth like ours, but there will be place and time, since creatures cannot do without it. There will be no succession of day and night, for these are of use only for our present life and occupations, but will be unnecessary there. There will, however, be a special period for worship.

Reward and punishment in the next world will both be eternal. It stands to reason that God should _promise_ eternal reward and punishment so as to inspire mankind with the highest possible degree of hope and fear, that they may have no excuse for not heeding the commandments so forcibly impressed upon them. Having made the promise, his justice prompts him to fulfil it, and those who suffer have themselves to blame.

We have now completed in outline Saadia's system of Judaism. There are many details which we necessarily had to leave out, especially in the more dogmatic part of his work, that dealing with specific Jewish doctrines, which he constructs on the basis of Rabbinical literature and Biblical allusions interpreted so as to harmonize with the statements of the Rabbis. Many questions specifically theological and eschatological assumed importance in his mind by reason of his surroundings. I mean the Mohammedan schools and sects, and the Karaite discussions which were closely modelled after them. The most important part of his system philosophically is that which deals with creation and the attributes of God. His discussions of the soul and of free will are less thorough, and the details of his doctrines of resurrection, future reward and punishment, the redemption of Israel and the Messiah are almost purely dogmatic. For a scientific ethic there is no room at all in the body of his work. A man's conduct is prescribed for him in the divine commandments, though in a general way the reason sees the right and the wrong of the so-called rational group of laws. Still as an after thought Saadia added a chapter to the "Emunot ve-Deot" in which he attempts to give a psychological basis for human conduct. Noting the various tendencies of individuals and sects in his environment to extremes in human behavior, some to asceticism, some to self-indulgence, be it the lust of love or of power, he lays emphasis on the inadequacy of any one pursuit for the demands of man's complex nature, and recommends a harmonious blending of all things for which men strive.[79]

God alone, he says, is a real unity, everything else is by the very reason of its being a creature essentially not one and simple, but composite and complex. So man has a love and desire for many things, and also aversion for many things. And as in other objects in nature it takes a combination of several elements to constitute a given thing, so in man it is by a proper systematization of his likes and dislikes that he can reach perfection of character and morals. It cannot be that God intended man to pursue one object all his life to the exclusion of all others, for in that case he would have implanted only one desire in man instead of many. You cannot build a house of stones alone neither can you develop a perfect character by one pursuit and one interest.

Pursuit of one thing is likely to result in harm, for example, over-indulgence in eating brings on disease. Wisdom is therefore needed in regulating one's conduct. The principle here is control of one's likes and dislikes. Of the three faculties of the soul, reason, spirit and desire, reason must be the master of the other two. If any matter occurs to a person's imagination, he must try it with his reason to see whether it is likely to benefit or injure him, and pursue or avoid it accordingly. If, on the other hand, he allows the lower parts of his soul to rule his reason, he is not a moral man.

The reader will recognize Plato in the last statement. The division of the soul into the three faculties of reason, spirit and desire is Platonic, as we have already seen, and the attempt to base an ethic on the proper relation between the powers of the soul also goes back to Plato. But Saadia tries to show that the Bible too favors this conception.

When Ecclesiastes tells us (1, 14), "I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind," he does not mean that there is nothing worth striving after, for he would then be condemning the objects of God's creation. His meaning is that it is vain to pursue any one thing to the exclusion of every other. He then proceeds to name three prominent objects of pursuit, wisdom, pleasure and worldly gain--all is vain when taken by itself. A proper combination of all is to be recommended as is delicately hinted in the same book (2, 3), "I searched in mine heart how to cheer my flesh with wine, mine heart yet guiding me with wisdom, and how to lay hold on folly."

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