ABSTRACT
If after the death of Maimonides the Jews of Spain and Southern France began to turn away from the study of philosophy, the reason was not only that they saw in it a danger to the authority of the Talmud. There was also another reason which, at first subsidiary, came in course of time to be decisive. This was that numbers of Jews believed themselves to have found a source of enlightenment superior to philosophy on the very questions for the answer to which men turned to philosophy, such as the nature of God, the relation of God to the universe, the character of the soul and its ultimate destination, and so forth. This new source was more akin to revelation than to logic; it gave certainty where philosophy gave only probability, and therefore enabled its devotees to dispense entirely with the latter.
