Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/288

Rh 2G& ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY Earned Mohammed ibn-Mohammed al-Ghazali), whose name was the last that attained a European reputation. Born near Tils in 1058, he studied there and at Nisabur; and having left his native province of Khorassan at the age of 36, he was appointed to a high educational post at Baghdad. There, as well as at Damascus, Jerusalem, and Alexandria, his lectures attracted crowds of eager listeners. Suddenly he withdrew from active life, assumed the habits of the Sufite mystic, and devoted himself to contemplation of reli gious truth ; and although he was persuaded to resume for a while his duties in the college of Baghdad, he soon returned to seclusion, and passed his last days in a monastery which he had himself founded at Tus (1111). To Algazel it seemed that the study of secular philosophy had resulted in a general indifference to religion, and that the scepticism which concealed itself under a pretence of piety was destroy ing the life and purity of the nation. With these views he carried into the fields of philosophy the aims and spirit of the Moslem theologian. In his Tendencies of the Philosophers (Makdcid al-Faldsifa) he gave a resume&quot; of the contemporary state of the speculative sciences as a pre liminary work to his Destruction of the Philosophers (Tehdfot al-faldaifa), in which the contradictions and errors of these sciences were pointed out, as well as their divergence from the orthodox faith. This indictment against liberal thought from the stand-point of the theological school was afterwards answered in Spain by Averroes ; but in Baghdad it heralded the extinction of the light of philosophy. Moderate and compliant with the popular religion as Alfarabius and Avicenna had always been, as compared with their Spanish successor, they had equally failed to conciliate the popular spirit, and were classed in the same category with the heretic or the member of an immoral sect. The 12th century exhibits the decay of liberal intellectual activity in the Caliphate, and the gradual ascendency of Turkish races animated with all the intolerance of semi-barbarian pro selytes to the Mahometan faith. Philosophy, which had only sprung up when the purely Arabian influences ceased to predominate, came to an end when the sceptre of the Moslem world passed away from the dynasty of Persia. Even in 1150 Baghdad had seen a library of philosophical books burned by command of the Caliph Mostandjed; and in 1192 the sama place might have witnessed a strange scene, in which the books of a physician were first publicly cursed, and then committed to the flames, while their owner was incarcerated. Thus, while the Latin church showed a marvellous receptivity for ethnic philosophy, and assi milated doctrines which it had at an earlier date declared impious, in Islam the theological system entrenched itself towards the end of the 1 2th century in the narrow orthodoxy of the Assarites, and reduced the votaries of Greek philo sophy to silence. The same phenomena were repeated in Spain under the Mahometan rulers of Andalusia and Marocco, with this difference, that the time of philosophical development was shorter, and the heights to which (Spanish thinkers soared were greater. The reign of Al-Hakem the Second (961- 970) inaugurated in Andalusia those scientific and philoso phical studies which were simultaneously prosecuted by the Society of Basra. From Cairo, Baghdad, Damascus, and Alexandria, books both old and new were procured at any price for the library of the prince ; 27 free schools were opened in Cordova for the education of the poor; and intelligent knowledge was perhaps more widely diffused in Mahometan Spain than in any other part of Europe at that day. The mosques of the city W3re filled with crowds who listened to lectures on science and literature, law and religion. But the future glory thus promised was long postponed. The usurping successor of Hakem found it a politic step to request the most notable doctors of the sacred law to examine the royal library ; and every book treating of philosophy, astronomy, and other forbidden topics, waa condemned to the flames. But the spirit of research, fostered by the fusion of races and the social and intel lectual competition thus engendered, was not crushed by these proceedings ; and for the next century and more the higher minds of Spain found in Damascus and Baghdad the intellectual aliment which they desired. At last, towards the close of the llth century, the long-pent spiritual ener gies of : Mahometan Spain burst forth in a brief series of illustrious men. Whilst the native Spaniards were narrow ing the limits of the Moorish kingdoms, and whilst tho generally fanatical dynasty of the Almohades might have been expected to repress speculation, the century preceding the close of Mahometan sway saw philosophy cultivated by Avempace, Abubacer, and Averroes. Even amongst the Almohades there were princes, such as Jusuf (who began his reign in 1163) and Jacub Almansor (who succeeded in 1184), who welcomed the philosopher at their courts, and treated him as an intellectual compeer. But about 1195 the old distrust of philosophy revived ; the philosophers were banished in disgrace ; works on philosophical topics were ordered to be confiscated and burned; and the son of Almansor condemned a certain Ben-Habib to death for the crime of philosophising. Arabian speculation in Spain was heralded by Avicebron, a name under which the schoolmen conceived an Arab thiuker, whereas modern scholars have shown that he was identical with Salomon ben-Gebirol, a Jewish sacred poet of no mean order, and still popular in the synagogue. Born at Malaga, and educated at Saragossa, he seems to have written most of his works between 1045 and 1070. His philosophical essay, known as the Fountain of Life (Fons Vitce), although, in a Latin version made about 1150, it acted like a ferment amongst the seething mass of hete- o o rodox Christian theology, found no immediate acceptance among his own philosophical compatriots, or amongst the Arabian thinkers who succeeded him. His speculations were drawn from sources other than those which supplied the dominant school of the 12th century in Spain, and found a congenial home amongst those who had drunk deeply from the ideas of Scotus Erigena. The doctrine of Avicebron attributed matter to everything, even to the soul, and to simple substances, and held that ultimately there was one universal matter. Thus, while intelligible and sensible substances differ in their forms, they are at one in matter. The doctrine became important in the dis putes as to the principle of individuation ; where Duns Scotus, in opposition to Aquinas, reverted to the position of Avicebron, whom he also resembled in his doctrine of the superiority of the will to the intellect. Such questions in the present age would seem to fall strictly within the sphere of logic. But it was the charac teristic of the thinkers of the mediaeval period, both Arabian and Christian, to magnify the power of abstract ideas, and to give a deep reality to logical and metaphysical ideas. The earlier schoolmen exaggerated the value of genera and species, till everything else grew faint in com parison ; and the Arabian thinkers similarly took in awful earnest the distinction of material and formal. Abstractions were first realised with uncommon distinctness and became almost palpable ; and then they were introduced into the world of popular conception. An irresistible attraction drew thinkers of different classes to apply their metaphy sical subtleties to the religious ideas of a celestial order of beings, and the results of this application not unnaturally gave rise to heresies. The ideas of Avicebron are the one-sided consequences of principles which had an influence, but a secondary one, on the whole Arabian school. They descend in the last