Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/287

Rh limits of the Syrian studies, which added to a scanty know ledge of Aristotle some acquaintance with his Syrian com mentators, were soon passed by the curiosity and zeal of the students in the Caliphate. During the 8th and 9th centuries, rough but generally faithful versions of Aristotle s principal works were made into Syriac, and then from the Syriac into Arabic. The names of some of these transla tors, such as Johannitius (Honein ibn-Ishak), were heard even in the Latin schools. By the labours of Honein and his family the great body of Greek science, medical, astro nomical, and mathematical, became accessible to the Arab- speaking races. But for the next three centuries fresh versions, both of the philosopher and of his commentators, continued to succeed each other. To the Arabians Aristotle represented and summed up Greek philosophy, even as Galen became to them the code of Greek medicine. They adopted the doctrine and system which the progress of human affairs had made the intel lectual aliment of their Syrian guides. It was a matter of historical necessity, and not an act of deliberate choice. Just as the early poets of Rome, when they tried to naturalise the drama, reproduced the works of Euripides, the popular tragedian of their time, so the Arabians, when the need of scientific culture awoke amongst them, accepted Aristotle. From first to last Arabian philosophers made no claim to originality; their aim was merely to propagate the truth of Peripateticism as it had been delivered to them. In medicine and astronomy, as well as in philosophy, they entertained an almost superstitious reverence for their Greek teachers. It was with them that the deification of Aristotle began; and from them the belief that in him human intelligence had reached its limit passed to the later school men. The doctrine is fixed: truth has been ascertained: all that is needed is a faithful and skilful interpreter. Hence, their perpetual labour of exposition and illustration: their epitomes and paraphrases of Aristotelian doctrine. The progress amongst the Arabians on this side lies in a closer adherence to their text, a nearer approach to the bare exegesis of their author, and an increasing emancipa tion from control by the tenets of the popular religion. Secular philosophy found its first entrance amongst the Saracens in the days of the early caliphs of the Abbaside dynasty, whose ways and thoughts had been moulded by their residence in Persia amid the influences of an older creed, and of ideas which had in the last resort sprung from the Greeks. The seat of empire had been transferred to Baghdad, on the highway of Oriental commerce; and the distant Khorassan became the favourite province of the caliph. Then was inaugurated the period of Persian supremacy, during which Islam was laid open to the full current of alien ideas and culture. The incitement came, however, not from the people, but from the prince: it was in the light of court favour that the colleges of Baghdad and Nisabur first came to attract students from every quarter, from the valleys of Andalusia, as well as the upland plains of Transoxiana. Al-Mausur, the second of the Abbasides, encouraged the appropriation of Greek science; but it was Al-Mamun, the son of Harun al-Eashid, who deserves in the Mahometan empire the same position of royal founder and benefactor which is held by Charlemagne in the history of the Latin schools. In his reign (813-833) Aristotle was first translated into Arabic. Legend told how Al-Mamun had been induced to send to the Byzantine emperor for Greek books on philosophy, in consequence of a vision in which a venerable personage, who made himself known as Aristotle, had excited without gratifying the curiosity of the caliph. Orthodox Mussulmans, however, distrusted the course on which their chief had entered, and his philosophical proclivities became one ground for doubt ing as to Lis final salvation. 267 In the Eastern provinces the chief names of Arabian philosophy are those known to the Latin schoolmen as Alkindius, Alpharabius, Avicenna, and Algazel, or under forms resembling these, or under other names derived from various parts of their complex Arabic designations. The first of these, Alkindius (Abu Jusuf Jacub ibn-Ishak al- Kend i), wrote in the reigns of Al-Mainiin and Al-Motasseni (813-842). His claims to notice at the present day rest upon a few works on medicine and the astrological astro nomy of his age, the only remnant left of the 200 treatises which he is said to have composed on all the themes of science and philosophy. With him begins that encyclopaedic character the simultaneous cultivation of the whole field of investigation which is reflected from Aristotle on the Arabian school. Towards the close of the 10th centuiy the presentation of an entire scheme of knowledge, begin ning with logic and mathematics, and ascending through the various departments of physical inquiry to the region of religious doctrine, was accomplished by a society which had its chief seat at Basra, the native town of Al-Kendi. This society the Brothers of Purity or Sincerity divided into four orders, wrought in the interests of religion no less than of science ; and though its attempt to compile an encyclopaedia of existing knowledge may have been prema ture, it yet contributed to spread abroad a desire for further information. The proposed reconciliation between science and faith was not accomplished, because the com promise could please neither party. The fifty-one treatises of which this encyclopaedia consists are interspersed with apologues in true Oriental style, and the idea of goodness, of moral perfection, is as prominent an end in every dis course as it was in the alleged dream of Al-Mamun. Tho materials of the work come chiefly from Aristotle, but they are conceived in a Platonising spirit, which places as the bond of all things a universal soul of the world with its partial or] fragmentary souls. Contemporary with this seiui- religious and semi-philosophical society lived Alfarabius (Abou-Xasr Mohammed ben-Mohammed ben-Tarkhan al- Farali) or Abunasar. From Turkestan, the place of his birth, he passed southward to Baghdad where he studied, and died at Damascus in 950, after living for some time at Aleppo on the invitation of its prince. The legendary- accounts of Al-Farabi describe him as a man of vast erudi tion, the master of seventy languages, and accomplished both in the theory and the practice of the musical art. Of his numerous writings on all the branches of science only a few remain in Arabic or Hebrew versions, but his para phrases of Aristotle formed the basis on which Avicenna constructed his system, and his logical treatises produced a permanent effect on the logic of the Latin scholars. He gave the tone and direction to nearly all subsequent specu lations among the Arabians. His order and enumeration of the principles of being, his doctrine of the double aspect of intellect, and of the perfect beatitude which consists in the aggregation of noble minds when they are delivered from the separating barriers of individual bodies, present at least in germ the characteristic theory of Averroes. But Al-Farabi was not always consistent in his views ; a cer tain sobriety checked his speculative flights ; and although holding that the true perfection of man is reached in this life by the elevation of the intellectual nature, he came towards the close to think the separate existence of intellect no better than a phantasm and delusion. Unquestionably the most illustrious name amongst the Oriental Moslems was Avicenna (980-1037). His fame in Europe rested more upon his medical canon than on Ins philosophical works ; but even in logic and metaphysics his influence on the West was considerable. With him the encyclopedic tendencies of the school of Baghdad reached their culmination. He was followed by Algazel (Abou-