Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/191

 activity, independent of the body with which it is associated, proves its immortality, but this immortality does not imply separate existence, but rather re-absorption in the source. From the  ' aql also proceeds the universe, but not like the reason of man by direct emanation, but by the medium of successive emanations.

Ibn Sina was the last of the great philosophers of the East. Two causes combined to terminate philosophy proper in Asiatic Islam. In the first place it had become closely identified with the Shi'ite heresies, and was thus in bad repute in the eyes of the orthodox; whilst the Shi'ite sects themselves, all of the extremer kind (ghulat), which had devoted themselves most to philosophical studies, had also taken up a number of pre-Islamic religious theories, such as transmigration of souls, etc., which were detrimental to scientific research. Neo-Platonism had shown itself at an earlier period prone to similar tendencies. As a result the Shi'ites tended towards mystic and often fantastic theories, which were discouraging to the study of Aristotelian doctrines. The second cause lay in the rise of dominant Turkish elements, Mahmud of Ghazna, then the Saljuk Turks, which were of uncompromising orthodoxy, and abhorred everything which was associated with the Shi'ites or tended to rationalism. For all that it left permanent marks in Asiatic Islam in two directions: in orthodox scholasticism and in mysticism.