the Greeks never afterward remedied until the time of Plotinus, who, without propounding a doctrine of emanation, arranged the universe as a hierarchy of existence, beginning with the Good, and descending through correlated Being and Intelligence, to Soul or Life, which produces Nature with all its multiplicity, and so stands on “the horizon” between undivided and divided being.  In the famous encyclopaedia of the “Brothers of Purity,” written in the East about A.D. 1000, and representing Muslim thought at its best, the hierarchy takes this form:  God, Intelligence, Soul, Primal Matter, Secondary Matter, World, Nature, the Elements, Material Things. (See Dieterici, ‘Die Philosophic der Araber im X. Jahrhundert n.  Chr.,’ 2 vols., Leipzig, 1876-79.) In the hands of Ibn Gabirol, this is transformed thus:  God, Will, Primal Matter, Form, Intelligence, Soul—­vegetable, animal, rational, Nature, the source of the visible world.  If we compare these hierarchies, we shall see that Ibn Gabirol makes two very important changes:  first, he introduces an altogether new element, viz., the Will; second, instead of placing Intelligence second in rank, next to God, he puts Will, Matter, and Form before it.  Thus, whereas the earliest thinkers, drawing on Aristotle, had sought for an explanation of the world in Intelligence, he seeks for it in Will, thus approaching the standpoint of Schopenhauer.  Moreover, whereas they had made Matter and Form originate in Intelligence, he includes the latter, together with the material world, among things compounded of Matter and Form.  Hence, everything, save God and His Will, which is but the expression of Him, is compounded of Matter and Form (cf.  Dante, ‘Paradiso,’ i. 104 seq.).  Had he concluded from this that God, in order to occupy this exceptional position, must be pure matter (or substance), he would have reached the standpoint of Spinoza.  As it is, he stands entirely alone in the Middle Age, in making the world the product of Will, and not of Intelligence, as the Schoolmen and the classical philosophers of Germany held.

The ‘Fountain of Life’ is divided into five books, whose subjects are as follows:—­I.  Matter and Form, and their various kinds.  II.  Matter as the bearer of body, and the subject of the categories.  III.  Separate Substances, in the created intellect, standing between God and the World.  IV.  Matter and Form in simple substances.  V. Universal Matter and Universal Form, with a discussion of the Divine Will, which, by producing and uniting Matter and Form, brings being out of non-being, and so is the ‘Fountain of Life.’  Though the author is influenced by Jewish cosmogony, his system, as such, is almost purely Neo-Platonic.  It remains one of the most considerable attempts that have ever been made to find in spirit the explanation of the world; not only making all matter at bottom one, but also maintaining that while form is due to the divine will, matter is due to the divine essence, so that both are equally spiritual.  It is especially interesting as showing us, by contrast, how far Christian thinking, which rested on much the same foundation with it, was influenced and confined by Christian dogmas, especially by those of the Trinity and the Incarnation.