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Part Two · Chapter Thirty-Eight — Courage and Intuition as Prophetic Prerequisites
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Know that every person necessarily has a power of boldness — were it not for this, he would not be moved by thought to repel whatever harms him. This power, in my view, is in the psychic faculties analogous to the repulsive force in the natural faculties. This power of boldness varies in strength and weakness like all other faculties — so much so that you find among people one who attacks a lion, while another flees from a mouse; one who charges a whole army and fights it, while another is thrown into terror and fear when a woman shouts at him. There must also be a constitutional temperamental disposition from the start, and it increases and brings out what is potential through practice and according to a certain view; and it similarly decreases through lack of practice and according to another view. From childhood age the abundance or weakness of this power is apparent in children.
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Likewise the power of intuition exists in all people and varies in lesser or greater degree — particularly in matters in which a person has intense interest and directed thought, to the point that you will find in yourself that so-and-so said or did such-and-such in a particular affair, and it proves to be exactly so. You find among people those whose conjecture and intuition are very strong and accurate to the point that they barely imagine something will be without it being as they imagined — or at least in part. The causes of this are many, from various indicators, prior, subsequent, and present; but the strength of this intuition is that the mind passes over all these premises and produces a conclusion from them in the shortest time, to the point that one thinks it is in no time at all. Through this faculty some people make predictions about great coming events.
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These two powers must be very strong in prophets — I mean the power of boldness and the power of intuition — and when the intellect overflows upon them these two powers are greatly and greatly strengthened, reaching the point you know: a solitary individual with his staff advances against a great king to deliver a nation from under his yoke, and he is neither frightened nor does he consider it overwhelming, because he was told 'I will be with you' (Exod. 3:12). This state also differs among them, but it must be present in all of them — as Jeremiah was told, 'Do not be afraid of them' etc. (Jer. 1:8), 'Do not be dismayed before them' etc., 'Behold I have made you today a fortified city' etc. (ibid. 1:18); and to Ezekiel it was said, 'Do not fear them or their words' (Ezek. 2:6). You find all of them, peace be upon them, possessed of great boldness. And through the abundance of the power of intuition in them, they tell of coming events with the greatest speed — though this too differs among them, as you know.
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Know that true prophets undoubtedly attain theoretical perceptions that a person could not attain by mere speculation — perceptions of the causes that necessarily entail that known thing. Similarly they report things that a person could not report by mere conjecture and ordinary intuition alone, because the very same overflow that overflowed upon the imaginative faculty, perfecting it to the point that it foretells what will be and perceives it as if the senses had perceived those things and they had reached the imagination through the senses — that same overflow also perfects the action of the rational faculty, so that it attains knowledge of real existing things and acquires this perception as if it had attained it by theoretical premises.
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This is the truth believed by one who is fair to himself, for all things bear witness to one another and indicate one another. And this must hold first in the rational faculty — for the real nature of the overflow of the Active Intellect is directed at it, and it is what brings the rational faculty from potentiality to actuality; from the rational faculty the overflow then reaches the imaginative faculty. How then could the imaginative faculty attain this level of perfection — perceiving what has not reached it through the senses — while the same did not attain to the rational faculty, namely the perception of what had not been perceived through premises, conclusion, and thought? This is the true meaning of prophecy, and those opinions are what the prophetic communication is specifically about.
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I specified 'true prophets' in my formulation to exclude the members of the third class who have no rational faculty at all and no knowledge — only bare imaginations and conjectures. And perhaps even what those persons perceive are nothing but opinions they already held, whose traces remained imprinted in their imaginations along with everything else in their imaginative faculty; and when many of those imaginings faded and were effaced, the traces of those opinions alone remained and appeared to them — so they took them as something newly arrived, something that had come from without. Their case is to me like a person who has a thousand animal figures in his house; then all who were in that house left except one individual who had been among them. When that person finds himself alone with that individual, he thinks the individual has just now entered the house — but that is not the case; rather it is among those who did not leave.
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This is one of the locations of the most deadly confusions, and how many of those who wish to be discerning have been destroyed by it.
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Because of this you find people who confirmed their opinions through dreams they saw, thinking that what they saw in sleep was something separate from the opinion they held or heard while awake.
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Therefore no attention should be paid to one whose rational faculty is not complete and who has not attained the peak of theoretical perfection — for it is the one who has attained theoretical perfection who can perceive additional matters when the divine intellect overflows upon him; that is the true prophet. Scripture states this explicitly: ve-navi levav ḥokhma — meaning: the true prophet is one who possesses a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90:12). This too must be known.