Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/289

Rh ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY 269 instance from the Alexandrians, particularly as Alex andrian ideas are presented in the book DC Causis, and in the Apocryphal Theology of Aristotle. Both of these works (which passed under a variety of other names) belong to a class of writings of Neo-Platonic tone and contents, which were accredited by their ascription to Pythagoras, Empe- docles, Plato, and Aristotle, and circulated amongst the Arabians before the canon of Peripatetic scriptures had been definitively fixed by the school of Baghdad. The Theology known as Aristotle s did not appear in Latin before 1519, when it was translated from an Arabic manuscript of the 9th century ; whereas the De Causis, although unknown to the Moslem world, was familiar to the Latins of the 13th century. The Theology was an exposition of the theory of Plotinus ; the De Cansis was extracted from the Theological Elements of Proclus ; and both works presented the usual Alexandrian system of emanation and hypostases, the graduated series of exter- nalisations and manifestations of the first cause or absolute unity, firstly, in Intelligence; secondly, in the Soul of the universe ; thirdly, in Xature and the region of mutability. These sucessive spheres of being, where the central unity expands into the circumference without losing its simplicity, and the circumference is instinctively led towards its controlling centre, lay at the basis of the conception of the universe held more or less by all the Moslem philosophers. The first of creatures, says Avicenna, is the Intelligence, in which are contained soul and life. The first cause is above all intelligence. The principles exert a causal influence according to their degree of elevation. About a generation after Avicebron the rank of Moslem thinkers proper was introduced by Abou-Bekr Mohammed ben-Jahya, surnamed Ibn-Badja, and known to the Latin world as Avempace. He was born at Saragossa, and died comparatively young at Fez in 1138. Besides commenting on various physical treatises of Aristotle s, he wrote some philosophical essays, notably one on the Republic or Regime of the Solitary. In its general character, and in several peculiarities, it resembles the Rejniblic of Plato. The Solitary of whom Ibn-Badja speaks is the stranger who seeks for a better commonwealth than the common vul garity of the world, who, like some rare plant that springs up unsown in a bed of ordinary flowers, would fain regain his native air. Ibn-Badja proposed to trace the steps by which such an one taken alone, rising above his animal nature, might by abstraction and reflection elicit the universal forms of material things from the data of sense, and thus finally apprehend the pure intelligences or specu lative forms. As against Algazel, he maintained the right of the intellect to rise by scientific contemplation to the philosophical heaven, to a union with the ever-active intellect which moves the spheres. The consciousness of this union is the commonwealth of the solitary,- -the enduring commonwealth of intellect in which the philoso pher abides. The same theme was developed by Ibn-Tofail in his philosophical romance, called Hayy ibn-Jakdhdn (the Living, Son of the Waking One), best known by Pococke s Latin version, as the Philosophies Autodidactus. Ibn- Tofail, the Abubacer of the schoolmen, was &quot;born at Guadix in Andalusia, and died at Marocco in 1185. At the court of Jusuf he combined the offices of vizier and physician, and employed his influence to introduce younger students to the notice of the prince. Ibn-Tofail wrote on medicine and astronomy, as well as philosophy, but his romance, which has been translated into Hebrew, Latin, English, and other European languages, is his only extant work. It describes the process by which an isolated truth-seeker detaches himself from his lower passions, and raises himself above the material earth and the orbs of heaven to the forms which are the source of their movement, until he arrives at a union with the supreme intellect. The experi ences of the religious mystic are paralleled with the ecstatic vision in which the philosophical hermit sees a world of pure intelligences, where birth and decease are unknown. It was this theory which Averroes (112G-1198), the last and most famous of the thinkers of Moslem Spain, carried out to his doctrine of the unity of intellect. The whole doctrine will be discussed under the heading AVERROES ; but its general purport is this. Reproducing, on one hand, the customary psychology of Aristotle as it rises gradually from the mere sense to the understanding, it emphasises, on another hand, the permanent subsistence and action of intellect apart from all materiality and from the individuals who share in the intellectual power. In the active intellect it finds the motive principle, and the full fruition of human reason. Sometimes this intellect is invested with the supremacy of the sphere beneath the moon, and connected with a more universal intelligence through a hierarchy of spiritual principles in the celestial system. Such a mind is the sole actual intellect in which the generations of thinking men live and move. In complete union with it lies their perfect beatitude ; and, save as a temporary participant in the blessings of this universal form, the intellectual soul is a nonentity. The philosophers thus characterised were in almost every case physicians ; and with their medical knowledge they frequently combined studies in mathematics, astronomy, and alchemy. In all these departments they were the pupils of Greeks, whose text they accepted almost as a revelation. Their talent lay in the elaboration of details, and in correcting certain mistakes of their guides ; but they never introduced any comprehensive change. Still their conjunct prosecution of physical and metaphysical studies gave them an advantage over their Latin contemporaries, with whom the schools of dialectic grew into exaggerated prominence, whilst few traces were left, as at Salerno, of the medical and scientific pursuits of the ancient world. Their acquaintance with art was another feature in favour of the Arabians. Al-Keudi, Al-Farabi, and Ibn-Badja were musicians of note: Ibn-Tofail and Ben-Gebirol were famous as poets. Their studies in the sacred law and in theology did not unduly dominate their philosophical investigations, and they combined much practical work as physicians and statesmen with an almost incredible industry in appro priating and systematising the wisdom of Greece. But the great educational value of Arabian philosophy for the later schoolmen consisted in its making them acquainted with an entire Aristotle. At the moment when it seemed as if everything had been made that could be made out of the fragments of Aristotle, and the compilations of Capella, Cassiodorus, and .others, and when mysticism and scep ticism seemed the only resources left for the mind, the horizon of knowledge was suddenly widened by the acquisi tion of a complete Aristotle. Thus the mistakes inevitable in the isolated study of an imperfect Organon could not henceforth be made. The real bearing of old questions, and the meaninglessncss of many disputes, were seen in the new conception of Aristotelianism given by the Meta physics, and other treatises. The former Realism and Nominalism were lifted into a higher phase by the principle of the universalising action of intellect (Intdledus in formis agit universalitatem). The commentaries of the Arabians in this respect supplied nutriment more readily assimilated by the pupils than the pure text would have been. Arabian philosophy, whilst it promoted the exegesis of Aristotle and increased his authority, was not less notable as the source of the separation between theology and philo-