Private Education and Independent Study
MY FATHER BEGAN TO READ the Holy Scripture with me when I was six. “In the beginning, God created heaven and earth.” Here I interrupted him and asked: “But, Papa, who created God?”
FATHER: No one created God; he has existed from all eternity.
SOLOMON: Did he exist ten years ago?
F: Yes, indeed, he existed a hundred years ago.
S: So could God be a thousand years old?
F: Careful! God is eternal.
S: But he must have been born at some point? [29]
V: No, you little fool! God is eternal and eternal and eternal.—
I wasn’t satisfied with this answer, but I thought Papa must know better than me, and I should leave it at that.1
At the beginning of childhood, when the intellect is still undeveloped but the imagination is already blooming, this kind of thought is quite natural.
The intellect seeks simply to grasp, the imagination to encompass. That is, the intellect seeks merely to understand how an object came into being, and it does so without taking into account whether or not we can properly represent objects whose genesis is known to us. The imagination, in contrast, seeks to encompass within an image, as part of a larger whole, that which has an origin we know. For example, an infinite series of numbers following a particular rule is, for the intellect, no better or worse an object than a finite series of numbers [30] following the same rule: both series have clearly defined properties by virtue of conforming to the rule. Only the finite series, however, exists for the imagination. The infinite series doesn’t, because it cannot be encompassed within a complete whole.
Much later, when I was living in Breßlau, this idea led to a thought that I developed in an essay and that coincides with the foundations of Kantian philosophy, even though at the time, I knew nothing about that philosophy. (I showed the essay to Professor Garve.)2 I expressed this thought in more or less the following way: Metaphysical thinkers necessarily wind up contradicting themselves. The principle of sufficient reason or cause is, according to Leibniz’s own admission, an empirical principle—here he invokes Archimedes’ experiment with the scale. And, indeed, one learns through experience that every single thing has its cause. But for this very reason, because every thing has its cause, nothing can be the first cause, i.e., a cause that has no cause. How, then, can metaphysicians derive the existence of a first cause from this principle? [31]
I later found this objection developed more rigorously in Kantian philosophy. For Kant’s philosophy shows that the category of cause, or the form applied in hypothetical principles of objects in nature—whereby their relation to each other is determined a priori—can only be applied to objects of experience through an a priori schema. The first cause—which contains a complete and infinite series of causes and, because the infinite can never be complete, a contradiction as well—is not an object of the intellect, but rather an idea of reason. Or rather, according to my own theory, it is an invention of the imagination. Not satisfied with simply understanding a law, the imagination seeks to encompass within an image the whole multiplicity that is subject to the law, even when that image runs counter to the law.
Another time, when I was reading the story of Jacob and Esau, my father recited a passage from the Talmud that says: Jacob and Esau divided all the goods of the world between them. Esau chose the goods of this life, [32] Jacob the goods of the future life, and because we are Jacob’s descendants, we must renounce all worldly goods.
With some disdain, I replied that Jacob shouldn’t have been such a fool; he should have chosen the goods of this world.
Unfortunately for me, the answer my father gave was to say: “You godless child!” And then he boxed my ear. The slap didn’t clear away my doubts, but it did make me keep quiet.
Prince Radziwil, a great lover of hunting, once came to our village to watch a hunt, bringing with him his daughter (who would later marry Prince Rawuzky), as well as his whole courtly entourage.
The young princess and her ladies-in-waiting and servants took their midday nap in the very room where I used to sit behind the oven as a little boy. I was astonished by the splendor and brilliance of the courtly entourage. Utterly delighted, I stared at the beautiful people and their gold- and silver-trimmed [33] clothes; my eyes simply couldn’t get enough of the scene. My father walked in just as I exclaimed, beside myself with joy: “How beautiful!” As a way of calming me and also reinforcing the principles of our faith, he whispered in my ear: “Little fool! In the future world, the duksel will stoke the pezure for us.” (That is, in the future world, the princess will stoke the oven for us.)
It is almost impossible to describe what I felt upon hearing this idea. On the one hand, I believed my father and was very happy about the bliss that awaited us, even as I felt sorry for the poor princess, condemned as she was to carry out such miserable duties. On the other hand, though, I simply couldn’t get my head around the notion that this rich beautiful princess in such magnificent clothes would stoke the oven for a poor Jew. I felt very confused until some game drove these thoughts from my head. [34]
From my very early childhood, I’ve had a great love of, and talent for, drawing. In my father’s house, to be sure, I never got to see an example of this art. But on the title pages of various Hebrew books, I saw woodcuts of leaves, birds, and other such things. I enjoyed looking at these woodcuts immensely, and I tried to imitate them using little pieces of chalk and coal. What really helped me in this pursuit, though, was a Hebrew book of fables, in which the dramatis personae—the animals—were represented by woodcuts.3 I drew each figure with the greatest precision. While my father admired my aptitude, he also admonished me with these words: You should study the Talmud and become a rabbi. Whoever understands the Talmud—he understands everything.
Later, my father moved to H., where there was a manor house with several rooms covered in beautiful tapestries. Because the owner of the estate lived elsewhere and seldom visited the property, the rooms almost always stood empty. [35] My passion for painting went so far that, whenever I could, I would steal off to these rooms and make portraits of the figures on the tapestries.
I was once found standing in front of these tapestries in the middle of winter. Half frozen, I had a piece of paper in one hand—for there was no furniture in the room—and was copying the figures on the walls with my other hand. My own estimation is that if I had stayed with it, I would have become a great painter, but not a very exact one.4 In other words, I would have been able to outline the main features of a painting with ease, but would not have had the patience to carry out the rest of the work with precision.
The little room in which my father studied contained a cabinet filled with books. He had forbidden the reading of all books except the Talmud. But that was not enough to stop me. My father spent most of his day dealing with domestic matters, and I made good use of this time. [36] Driven by my curiosity, I approached the cabinet, leafed through all the books in it, and, having already acquired quite a bit of Hebrew, found several of them to be more enjoyable than the Talmud.
This reaction was perfectly natural. Just consider: On the one side, there is the dry content of the Talmud, most of which is incomprehensible to a child. I am not even counting the parts that deal with jurisprudence—the laws of sacrifice, washing, prohibited foods, holidays, etc.—where the silliest rabbinical ideas are developed over many volumes with the most minute dialectics, and fatuous investigations are pursued with the greatest mental exertions imaginable. For example: How many white hairs can a red cow have and still be a red cow?5 Which sorts of sores require what kind of purification? Is it permissible to kill a louse or a flea on the Sabbath?6 (The former is allowed; the latter is a deadly sin.) Should the slaughtering of cattle be carried out at the throat or the tail?7 Did the high [37] priests put on their shirts first and then their pants, or was it the other way around?8 If a man had a brother who died childless, thereby leaving the man, the jabam, obligated to marry his brother’s widow, and then such a man were to fall off a roof and lie in the muck, would he have thereby fulfilled his duties, or would he not have? Ohe iam satis est!9
Compare these excellent tales, served up to and forced upon children to the point of revulsion; compare these tales, I say, with stories in which natural events are narrated in an edifying and pleasing manner, as well as with a knowledge of how the world works that both broadens one’s perspective on nature and brings everything together in a well-ordered system. Compare stories that do this and more with the Talmud, and, truly, my preference will seem justified.
The best of these stories were as follows. There was a Hebrew chronicle published under the title Zemach David [דוד חמצ], written by an intelligent chief rabbi in Prague named David Gans. (He was, in addition, the author of a book about astronomy, which will be discussed below. Gans had the honor of knowing Tycho Brahe personally [38], and of conducting astronomical research together with Brahe at the observatory in Copenhagen.) There was Josephus, who has been willfully misconstrued, as one can prove by citing certain pieces of evidence.10 There was a history of the persecution of Jews in Spain. And there was the book that held the greatest attraction for me, a work about astronomy.11
Here a new world opened up before me, and I set about exploring it with much enthusiasm. Imagine: There is a child of about seven who knows nothing of mathematics. He comes upon a book about astronomy. It intrigues him greatly, but no one can help him make sense of it (I couldn’t tell my father about my interest, and even he wouldn’t have been able to explain the book’s content). How it must have excited the boy’s knowledge-craving mind! His success further suggests that this was so.
Because I was still a child, and beds were scarce in my father’s house, I was [39] permitted to sleep in a bed together with my old grandmother (in the room that served as the study). And because I had to read the Talmud during the day, and was not allowed to touch other books, I decided that evenings would be my time for astronomical study.
Thus, after my grandmother went to bed, I would light a fresh strip of pinewood, go up to the cabinet, and take out my beloved astronomy volume. My grandmother complained bitterly about this, because it was too cold for an old woman to be alone in bed. But I didn’t listen; I would continue with my studies until the wood was used up.
Having followed this routine several evenings in a row, I finally came upon an account of the celestial sphere and its circles, devised to explain all astronomical phenomena.
In the book where I encountered it, this system was presented through a single diagram. But the author also gave his readers [40] the following good advice: Because, in an plane diagram, the various circles could only be shown with flat lines, readers should make themselves either a proper globe or a sphera armillaris in order to understand the ideas better.
I thus decided to build such a sphera armillaris by twisting rods together. After I had done so, I was able comprehend the whole book. Because my father couldn’t know anything about these activities, I always hid my sphera armillaris in a corner of the bookcase before going to bed. The problem was that my grandmother often watched me as I was completely absorbed in reading. Furthermore, she sometimes saw me looking at circles fashioned out of braided rods, and that were stacked on top of each other crosswise. She became terribly worried as a result of this, believing nothing less than that her grandson had lost his mind. [41]
And so she reported to my father what she had seen. She also showed him where I kept my magic instrument. Having quickly surmised its purpose, he had me summoned. When I appeared, he questioned me with the following words:
F: What kind of toy have you made for yourself?
S: It is a kader.(a)
F: What is the meaning of this?
I proceeded to tell him how the circles made celestial phenomena comprehensible. My father was, to be sure, a fine rabbi, but he had no special talent for science and could not understand all that I tried to explain to him. He was especially confused by the relationship between my sphera armillaris and the diagram in the book. How could [42] spheres be rendered as flat lines? He could, however, recognize this much: I was quite certain of myself.
He scolded me for breaking his rule against reading anything other than the Talmud. Yet inwardly he was very pleased by the fact that without any mentoring or prior knowledge, his young son had been able to carry out a whole scientific project. And with that, the interrogation came to an end. [43]
1 Although Maimon’s anecdotes generally turn out to be true when one puts them to the historical test, it should be noted that Jewish boys were traditionally initiated into biblical studies by reading the Book of Leviticus, for complex and partly obscure reasons. The Israeli literary critic Pinchas Lahover suggested that Maimon was comparing himself here to the great Greek philosopher-heretic Epicurus, who was said to have doubted Hesiod’s creation myth as a boy, Diogenes Laertius, bk. 10. This is, perhaps, too clever, especially since Epicurus’ puzzlement would seem to have been over the idea of chaos, and Maimon uses this incident to introduce a discussion of infinity and the imagination. See Lachover’s, “Introduction” to Solomon Maimon, Hayyei Shelomo Maimon (Tel Aviv, 1941), p. 28n2.
2 Christian Garve (1742–98), one of the most prominent German philosophers of the eighteenth century, and one of the earliest and strongest critics of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
3 Maimon decorated the title page of his Hebrew manuscript, Hesheq Shelomo. The book of fables he describes is almost certainly Mashal Haqadmoni by the thirteenth-century Castilian poet Isaac ben Solomon Abi Sahula, which was first printed by Gershom Soncino in Brescia in 1490–91 and many times thereafter in both Hebrew and Yiddish.
4 Maimon is probably making a statement about his intellectual style more generally.
5 See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Avoda Zara, 24a.
6 See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sabbath, 14a.
7 See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Hulin, 27a.
8 See Babylonian Talmud, Tractate Sanhedrin, 49b.
9 The last case is taken from Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 53b and Baba Kamma 27a. Maimon’s “muck” is here a misogynistic euphemism. The hypothetical case discussed there involves a man falling off a roof and, without intent, penetrating his widowed sister-in-law. The rabbis rule that such an incident does not constitute sexual intercourse. The italicized phrase is another instance of Maimon’s schoolboy Latin and means “but enough,” (cf. Martial, Epigrams, vol. 1, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classic Library), edited and translated by D. R. Shackleton Bailey, bk. 4, p. 327.)
10 Maimon probably refers here to the popular medieval pseudepigrahic Jewish work Sefer Jossipon, rather than the historical Josephus. For the standard modern scholarly edition of the Hebrew edition, see David Flusser ed., Sefer Jossipon (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1981), 2 vols.
11 R. David Gans’ sixteenth-century work of astronomy was Nehmad Ve-naim, which Maimon almost certainly read in the Jessnitz edition of 1742. For a somewhat dated but still useful biography of Gans, see Andre Neher, David Gans: Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the 16th Century (Oxford: Littman Library, 1986).
a [Maimon] The Hebrew term for globe.