Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/263

 who was wazir and court physician under the Muwahhid Abu Yaqub (A.H. 558-580). His teaching was in general conformity with that of Ibn Bajja (Avempace), but the mystic element is much more strongly marked. He admits ecstasy as a means of attaining the highest knowledge and of approaching God. But in Ibn Tufayl's teaching this knowledge differs very much from that aimed at by the Sufis: it is mystic philosophy rather than mystic theology. The beatific vision reveals the Agent Intellect and the chain of causation reaching down to man and then back again to itself.

In his views as to the need of removing the doctrines of philosophy from the multitude he shows the same principles as Ibn Bajja, which are those which came to be recognised as the proper official attitude under the Muwahhids, and defends them in a romance called Hayy b. Yaqzan, "the Living One son of the Wakeful," the work by which his name is best remembered. In this story we have the picture of two islands, one inhabited by a solitary recluse who spends his time in contemplation and thereby raises his intellect until he finds that he is able to apprehend the eternal verities which are in the One Active Intellect. The other island is inhabited by ordinary people who are occupied in the commonplace incidents of life and follow the practices of religion in the form known to them. In this way they are content and happy, but fall far short of the complete and perfect happiness of the recluse on the other