Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 3.djvu/165

Rh The subject of general average is only incidentally con nected with that of marine insurance, being itself a distinct branch of maritime law. But the subject of particular average arises directly out of the contract of insurance, and will therefore be best considered in connection with it. (See INSURANCE.) For further information with respect to the subject of average, the reader is referred to the famous work of M. Valin, Commentaire sur I Ordonnance de 1681, t. ii. p. 147-198, ed. 1760; to Emerigon, Traite des Assurances, t. i. pp. 598-674; Arnould on Marine Insurance ; and the treatises on Average of Stevens, Benecke, Baily, Hopkins, and Lowndes. (j. TV A.)

 AVERNUS, a lake of Campania in Italy, near Baiae, occupying the crater of an extinct volcano, and about a mile and a half in circumference. From the gloomy horror of its surroundings, and the mephitic character of its exhala tions, it was regarded by ancient superstition as an entrance to the infernal regions. It was especially dedicated to Proserpine, and an oracle was maintained on the spot. In 214 B.C., Hannibal with his army visited the shrine, but not so much, according to Pliny, for purposes of piety, as in hope of surprising the garrison of Puteoli. By some critics the Cimmerians of Homer were supposed to have been the inhabitants of this locality, and Virgil in his ^Eneid adopted the popular opinions in regard to it. Originally there seems to have been no outlet to the lake, but Agrippa opened a passage to the Lucrine, and turned this &quot; mouth of hell &quot; into a harbour for ships. The channel, however, appears to have become obstructed at a later period. In the reign of Nero it was proposed to construct a ship-canal from the Tiber through Avernus to the Gulf of Baise, but the works were hardly commenced. The plan of connecting the lake with the Gulf of Baiaa was brought forward as late as 1858, but only to be abandoned. The Lago d Averno is now greatly frequented by foreign tourists, who are shown what pass for the Sibyl s Grotto, the Sibyl s Bath, and the entrance to the infernal regions, as well as the tunnel from Cumae, and ruins variously identified as belonging to a temple or a batliing-p .ace.

 AVERROES, known among his own people as Abul- Walid Mohammed Ibn- Ahmed Ibn-Mohammed IBN-ROSHD, the kadi, was born at Cordova in 1126, and died at Marocco in 1198. His early life was occupied in mastering the curriculum of theology, jurisprudence, mathematics, medicine, and philosophy, under the approved teachers of the time. The years of his prime were a disastrous era for Mahometan Spain, where almost every city had its own petty king, whilst the Christian princes swept the land in constant inroads. But with the advent of the Almohades, the enthusiasm which ^the desert tribes had awakened, whilst it revived religious life and intensified the observance of the holy law within the realm, served at the same time to reunite the forces of Andalusia, and inflicted decisive defeats on the chiefs of the Christian North. For the last time before its final extinction the Moslem caliphate in Spain displayed a splendour which seemed to rival the ancient glories of the Ommiade court. Great mosques arose ; schools and colleges were founded ; hospitals, and other useful and beneficent constructions, proceeded from the public zeal of the sovereign; and under the patronage of two liberal rulers, Jusuf and Jakub, science and philosophy flourished apace. It was Ibn-Tofail (Abubacer), the philosophic vizier of Jusuf, who introduced Averroes to that prince, and Avenzoar (Ibn-Zohr), the greatest of Moslem physicians, was his friend. Averroes, who was versed in the Malekite system of law, was made kadi of Seville (1169), and in similar appointments the next twenty- five years of his life were passed. We find him at different periods in Seville, Cordova, and Marocco, probably follow ing the court of Jusuf Almansur, who took pleasure in engaging him in discussions on the theories of philosophy and their bearings on the faith of Islam. But science and free thought then, as now, in Islam, depended almost solely on the tastes of the wealthy and the favour of the monarch. The ignorant fanaticism of the multitude viewed speculative studies with deep dislike and distrust, and deemed any one a Zendik (infidel) who did not rest content with the natural science of the Koran. These smouldering hatreds burst into open flame about the year 1195. Whether, as one story ran, he had failed in conversation and in his writings to pay the customary deference to the emir, or a court intrigue had changed the policy of the moment, at any rate Averroes was accused of heretical opinions and pursuits, stripped of his honours, and banished to a place near Cordova, where his actions were closely watched. Tales have been told of the insults he had to suffer from a bigoted populace. At the same time efforts were made to stamp out all liberal culture in Andalusia, so far as it went beyond the little medicine, arithmetic, and astronomy required for practical life. But the storm soon passed, when the transient passion of the people had been satisfied, and Averroes for a brief period survived his restoration to honour. He died in the year before his patron Almansur, with whom (in 1199) the political power of the Moslems came to an end, as did the culture of liberal science with Averroes. The philosopher left several sons, some of whom became jurists like Averroes s grandfather. One of them has left an essay, expounding his father s theory of the intellect. The personal character of Averroes is known to us only in a general way, and as we can gather it from his writings. His clear, exhaustive, and dignified style of treatment evidences the rectitude and nobility of the man. In the histories of his own nation he has little place ; the renown which spread in his lifetime to the East ceased with his death, and he left no school. Yet, from a note in a manuscript, we know that he had intelligent readers in Spain more than a century afterwards. His historic fame came from the Christian Schoolmen, whom he almost initiated into the system of Aristotle, and who, but vaguely discerning the expositors who preceded, admired in his commentaries the accumulated results of two centuries of labours. For Aristotle the reverence of Averroes was unbounded, and to expound him was his chosen task. The uncritical receptivity of his age, the defects of the Arabic versions, the emphatic theism of his creed, and the rationalising mysticism of some Oriental thought, may have sometimes led him astray, and given prominence to the less obvious features of Aristotelianism. But in his conception of the relation between philosophy and religion, Averroes had a light which the Latins were without. The science, falsely so called, of the several theological schools, their groundless distinctions and sophistical demonstrations, he regarded as the great source of heresy and scepticism. The allegorical interpretations and metaphysics which had been imported into religion had taken men s minds away from the plain sense of the Koran, and destroyed the force of those appeals which had been spoken to the hearts and understandings of our common humanity, not to the wisdom of the &quot; people of demonstration.&quot; God had declared a truth meet for all men, which needed no intellectual superiority to understand, in a tongue which each human soul could apprehend according to its powers and feelings. Accordingly, the expositors of religious metaphysics, Algazali included, are the enemies of true religion, because they make it a mere matter of syllogism. Averroes maintains that a return must be made to the words and teaching of the prophet ; that science must not expend itself in dogmatising on the metaphysical consequences of fragments of doctrine for 