Page:Arabic Thought and Its Place in History.djvu/272

 cannot be understood by us then nature has acted in vain, because it made that which is by nature understandable in itself to be not understood by anyone. But nothing is superfluous or in vain in nature. Therefore immaterial substances can be understood by us." (S. Thos. Aquin. Summa. 1, 88.)

As the Agent Intellect enters into communication with relative being it has to suffer the conditions of relativity, and so is not equally efficient in all; it acts on sensible images as form acts on matter, yet the Agent Intellect never becomes corruptible as that on which it acts.

These are in outline the points in the teaching of Ibn Rushd, which show the most marked differences from that of his predecessors, and which afterwards provoked most controversy amongst the Latin scholastics.

Ibn Rushd really ends the illustrious line of Arabic Aristotelians. A few Aristotelian scholars followed in Spain, but with the decay of the Muwahhid power these came to an end. Of those later scholars we may mention Muhyi ad-Din b. 'Arabi (d. 638) and 'Abdu l-Haqq b. Sab'im (d. 667). The former of these was primarily a Sufi, and shows a strong inclination towards pantheism. 'Abdu l-Haqq, the last of the Muwahhid circle, was also a Sufi, but at the same time an accurate student of Aristotle. In modern Islam there is no Aristotelian scholarship, save only in logic, where Aristotle has always held his own.