Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/575

 AVERRHOES. 559 the theory of creation is impossible. The universe consists of a hierarchy of principles, eternal, primordial, and autonomous, vaguely connected with a superior unity. One of these is the Active In- tellect, manifesting itself incessantly and constituting the perma- nent consciousness of humanity. This is the only form of immor- tality. As the soul of man is a fragment of a collective whole, temporarily detached to animate the body, at death it is reabsorbed into the Active Intellect of the universe. Consequently there are no future rewards or punishments, no feelings, memory, sensibility, love, or hatred. The perishable body has the power of reproduc- ing itself and thus enjoys a material immortality in its descendants, but it is only collective humanity that is immortal.* To those whose conceptions of paradise and the resurrection were as ma- terial as the Swarga of the Brahman or the Kama Loka heavens of the Buddhist, such collective and insensible immortality, like the Moksha and Nirvana, was virtually equivalent to annihilation, and the Averrhoists were universally stigmatized as materialists. Such theories as these necessarily induced the loftiest indiffer- entism as to religious formulas, although a wholesome dread of the rising Moslem fanaticism, from which Averrhoes had not es- caped scathless, rendered him cautious as to assailing the estab- lished faith. " The special religion of philosophers," he says, " is to study what exists, for the most sublime worship of God is the contemplation of his works, which leads us to a knowledge of him in all his reality. In the eye of God this is the noblest of actions, while the vilest is to accuse of error and presumption him who pays to divinity this worship, nobler than all other worship ; who adores God by this religion, the best of all religions." At the same time the received religions are an excellent instrument of morality. He who inspires among a people doubts as to the na- tional religion is a heretic, to be punished as such by the estab- lished penalties. The wise man will utter no word against the national religion, and will especially avoid speaking of God in a manner equivocal to the vulgar. When several religions confront each other, one should select the noblest. Thus all religions are of human origin, and the choice between them is a matter of opin- ion or policy — but policy, if nothing else, must have prevented
 * Renan, Averrhofcs et 1'AverrhoIsme, 3« tid. 1866, pp. 152-3, 156-60, 168.