Page:A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy.djvu/327

planted in them a desire for the Intelligences which accounts for their various motions.

Now Maimonides has prepared the ground and is ready to take up the question of the origin of the world, which was left open above. He enumerates three views concerning this important matter. 1. The Biblical View. God created everything out of nothing. Time itself is a creation, which did not exist when there was no world. For time is a measure of motion, and motion cannot be without a moving thing. Hence no motion and no time without a world. sure,

2. The Platonic View. The world as we see it now is subject to genesis and decay; hence it originated in time. But God did not make it out of nothing. That a composite of matter and form should be made out of nothing or should be reduced to nothing is to the Plato- nists an impossibility like that of a thing being and not being at the same time, or the diagonal of a square being equal to its side. There- fore to say that God cannot do it argues no defect in him. They be- lieve therefore that there is an eternal matter, the effect of God to be but co-eternal with him, which he uses as the potter does the clay.

3. The Aristotelian View. Time and motion are eternal. The heavens and the spheres are not subject to genesis and decay, hence they were always as they are now. And the processes of change in the lower world existed from eternity as they exist now. Matter is not subject to genesis and decay; it simply takes on forms one after the other, and this has been going on from eternity. It results also from his statements, though he does not say it in so many words, that it is impossible there should be a change in God's will. He is the cause of the universe, which he brought into being by his will, and as his will does not change, the universe has existed this way from eternity. The arguments of Aristotle and his followers by which they defend their view of the eternity of the world are based partly upon the na- ture of the world, and partly upon the nature of God. Some of these arguments are as follows:

Motion is not subject to beginning and end. For everything that comes into being after a state of non-existence requires motion to precede it, namely, the actualization from non-being. Hence if motion came into being, there was motion before motion, which is a contra- diction. As motion and time go together, time also is eternal.