Reid and Stewart on Lockean Creation

84 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY One more question begs to be addressed. If all that I have said here is correct, then why does not Maimonides explicitly appeal to the Thirteen Principles in the Guide? A possible answer to this question lies in the fact, I believe, that the Guide is, as Maimonides announced in his introduction and as Leo Strauss forcefully reminded us, an esoteric book. One of the "secret" teachings of the Guide, I suggest, is that the teachings of philosophy, properly understood (i.e., as adumbrated in the Guide), do not conflict with the Torah, properly understood (i.e., as adumbrated in the Guide). This is a dangerous teaching in the hands of the philosophically unsophisticated: not understanding philosophy properly (e.g., by slavishly following Aristotle even when--as with creation, according to Maimonides--he is wrong), they might be led to give up important beliefs of the Torah. Had he openly advertized his claim concerning philosophy and Torah by exoterically structuring the Guide on the Thirteen Principles of Faith, Maimonides might have led philosophically unsophisticated persons astray. They might have used his authority to justify an extensive allegorization of Scripture in their attempt to make it accord with the "truths" they mistakenly thought that philosophy teaches. Subsequent developments, especially in Provence, show how realistic this fear was. The Thirteen Principles of Faith, then, fall rather naturally into three groups; so naturally, in fact, that it is difficult to maintain that Maimonides himself did not realize it. The subject matters of these three groups parallel the subject matters of the three parts of the Guide and determine its structure . The upshot of this new interpretation of the structure of the Guide is that what Maimonides sought to teach the simple Jew in the principles he sought to teach the philosophic Jew in the Guide. In short, Maimonides was not schizophrenic. MENACHEM KELLNER University of Haifa REID AND STEWART ON LOCKEAN CREATION At 4. lo. 18 of the Essay Locke, who has been discussing the popular opinion that though minds or spirits can be created ex nihilo, not even God could so create matter, suggests that, on the contrary, the creation of matter is perhaps less difficult to imagine than that of minds: Possibly, if we would emancipate our selves from vulgar Notions, and raise our Thoughts, as far as they would reach, to a closer contemplation of things, we might be able to aim at some dim and seeming conception how Matter might at first be NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 8 5 made, and begin to exist by the power of that eternal first being: But to give beginning and being to a Spirit, would be found a more inconceivable effect of omnipotent Power. Jonathan Bennett and Peter Remnant have recently discussed some of the ensuing philosophical events? Leibniz's speculation in the New Essays as to quite what method of creation Locke had in mind; his unsuccessful attempt to discover it from Lady Masham; and Pierre Coste's later being told by Newton both what Locke had meant and that he himself had first suggested the idea to Locke. They leave the matter with Coste's publication in 17~ 9 o.f his conversation with Newton. 3 But there were two later writers who, being ignorant of Coste's account of Locke's words, were led into speculation about them. I The first of these was Thomas Reid, who suggests in his Intellectual Powers (1785) that Locke's words "may lead one to conjecture that he had a glimpse of that system which Berkeley afterwards advanced, but thought it proper to suppress it within his own breast. TM As Reid points out, Berkeley's view that God's creation of the material world means no more than decreeing to produce certain ideas in the minds of finite spirits, "removes all difficulty, in conceiving how matter was created." Berkeley, moreover, "does not fail to take notice of the advantage of his system on that account. ''5 ' An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). "How Matter Might at First Be Made," in Canadian Journal of Philosophy, supp. vol. 4, ed. C. E. Jarrett, J...