Literature. — Besides the authorities already quoted, see O. Celsius, De Maimonide (1727) ; Revue Orientale (Brux. 18il) ; Beer, Leben und Wi7-ken des Maimonides (Prag. 1844) ; Lebrecht, in Magazin f. d. Lite?: d. A us- landes, 1844, No. 45, p. 62 sq. ; Scheyer, Psychol. Syst. des Maimonides (Frankfort, 1846) ; Stein, J/. Maimonides (1846) ; R. ]\L Maimonides, Life, etc., ofM. Maimonides (Lond. 1837) ; Edelmann, Cheruda Genusu ; Joel, Reliy- ions-philosophie d. Maimonides, m the Programme of the Jewish theol. sem. at Breslau (1859) ; Jarac-Zewsky, in Zeitschr.f. Philos. u.philos. Kritik, new ser. xlvi (Halle, 1865), p. 5 sq. ; Franck, Diet, des Sciences Philosoph.iy,3l sq. ; Griitz, Gesch. d. ,Jud. vi, ch. x and xi ; vii, ch. i and ii ; Jost, Gesch. d. Judenth. n. s. Sekten, ii, 428 sq. ; ibid, in Herzog, Real- Ency Mop. s. v. ; Ueberwcg, Hist. Philos. (translated by Prof. Morris), i, 97 ; Dr. Milziener, in the Jewish Times (N. Y. 1872), p. 765 sq. ; Kitto, Bibl. Cyclo- pmdia, s. v. ; Chambers, Cyclopadia, s. v.
Main-sail is the rendering in the Auth. Version of the nautical term aprkiuov (from oprfw, to suspend or " hoist"), which occurs only in this sense in Acts xxvii, 40. It is explained bj' some critics, the largest sail of the poop, answering to our " mizzen-sail," and even yet called by the Venetians artimone. Some regard it as the " top-sail," Lat. supparum. Others understand by it a small sail or "jib" near the prow, called bj- the Eo- mans the. dolon. The term may thus be understood to signify properly the fore-sail, which, in the opinion of those qualified to judge, would be most useful in bring- ing a ship to head to the wind under the circumstances narrated by Luke (see llackett's Comment, ad loc). The vessels of that time had one, two, or throe masts ; the largest was in the stern (Smith's Diet, of Ant. s. v. Ma- ins). Hence, if Paul's ship had but one, the sail in ques- tion would have been that now called the jib, being fast- ened to a " boom" or spar projecting from the bowsprit ; but if, as is more probable from its size, it had at least two masts, this sail would be the one attached to the front mast, that is, the '"fore-sail." '"A sailor will at once see that the fore-sail was the best possible sail that could be set under the circumstances" (Smith, iS^j/jitvec^ of St. Paul, 3d edit. p. 139, note). See Ship.
Maine de Biran, Maimk Fuan^ois Pierrk Gou- THiEU, one of the most eminent French philosophers of our age, " the modern Malebranche," as he has been aptly termed, was born near Bergerac Nov. 29, 1766. Upon the completion of his collegiate studies he entered the army, and was engaged in the stormy "days of the first French Itevolutioii. Later ho dov.otod himself to politics, and in 1795 booamo a member of the department of Dordogne, from which, in 1797, he was deputed to the Council of the Five Hundred. From 1809 to 1814 he was a member of the legislative bodv ; after the Resto-
ration of 1816 he became a moderate royalist, and repre- sented the people as such. All this time he was deeply engaged also in philosophical studies. In 1800 the Na- tional Institute oifered a prize for the best essay "On the Infiuence of Habit upon the Faculty of Thinking ;" he wrote for it, and secured the prize. In 1803 he bore off another prize for an essay " On the Decomposition of the Faculty of Thinking;" and in 1807 he was award- ed a third prize, this time from the Berlin Academy of Science, for a memoir on the question " "Whether there is in man an inordinate internal intuition, and in what it differs from the perception of the senses." Further honors he gained shortly after from Copenhagen, for an exposition of" The Mutual Relation of Man's Bloral and Physical Constitution." In these different contributions to philosophical literature, Maine de Biran had gradu- ally brought a new philosophy to maturitj-. To give his system to the public in a more completed form, he published a short work entitled UExamen de la Philos- ophie de Laromiguiere ; and finally crowned his philo- sophical labors by his magnificent article on Leibnitz, in the BiograiMe Universelle ; and died, "too soon for the interest of philosophy," in 1824, leaving behind, howev- er, many traces of extraordinary philosophical genius, not only in France, but in various parts of Europe besides.
His Philosophy The principal point in M.Maine de
Biran's philosophy was the distinguishing of the icill, as a faculty, frf)m the emotions. He argues that "the soul is a cause, a force, an active principle," and that "the phe- nomena of consciousness can never be explained until we clearly apprehend the voluntary nature of its thoughts and impulses." " In order," says Morell, " to unfold the fact and expound the nature of man's natural activity (the hinge upon which the entire system turns), M. Maine de Biran analyzes the whole of what is contain- ed or implied in a given action; for example, a move- ment of the arm. When I move my arm there are three things to be observed : 1. The consciousness of a voluntary effort ; 2. The consciousness of a movement produced ; and, 3. A fixed relation between the effort, on the one hand, and the movement, on the other. Now, the source or cause of the whole movement is the icill, and this term will we now use as virtually synonymous with self. AVhether we say, I moved my arm, or my will moved it, the sentiment is exactly identical. Hence the notions oi cause, of will, of self, we find to be funda- mentally the same ; and several truths are by this means brought to light of great importance in metaphysical science (Preface to the Nouvelles Considerations [a post- humous work of Maine de Biran], p. 10). First, it be- comes evident that we possess a natural activity, the seat of which is in the will, so that whether we regard man as a thinking or an acting being, yet it is the will which alike presides over and regulates the flow of our thoughts or the course of our actions. Secondly, we infer that the will is the foundation of personality ; that my will is virtually myself. And, thirdly, we infer that to will is to cause, and that from the inward conscious- ness of volition, viewed in connection with the effect produced, we gain our first notion of causality. These three jioints, as Cousin has shown us, embrace in a small compass the whole philosophy of Maine de Biran. He first seizes, with admirable sagacity, the princijile of all human activity as resident in the power of the will, ex- emjilifying it even in the case of those muscular move- ments \vhi<h may ajipear to the unreflecting to be sim- ply the result of nervous excitement. Having estab- lished the principle of activity, as residing in the will, he proceeds to identify the will with our very personal- ity itself, showing that the soul is in its nature a force, the verj' essence of which is not to be acted upon, but to act. Finally, he proves that we gain our first notion of causality from tlie consciousness of our own personal effort, and that having once observed the conj\uiction of power exerted and effect produced in this particular case, we transfer the notion of cause thus originated into the objective world, and conclude by analogy the ne-