4. F. Mehren’s Series of Essays on Ibn Sînâ in the Periodical “Muséon”
from the year 1882 and on.
5. Clément Huart’s Arabic Literature, either in the French Original or
in the English Translation.
6. Carra de Vaux’s “Les Grands Philosophes: Avicenna,” Paris, Felix
Alcan, 1900, pp. vii et 302.
7. T. de Boer’s “History of Philosophy in Islâm,” both in Dutch and in
the English translation.
The “Offering to the Prince in the Form of a Compendium on the Soul,”
of which the present Pamphlet is my attempt at an English Translation,
is the least known throughout Egypt and Syria of all Ibn Sînâ’s
many and able literary works: indeed I have failed, after repeated
and prolonged enquiry, to come across so much as one, among my many
Egyptian acquaintances, that had even heard of it.
Doctor Samuel Landauer of the University of Strassburg published
both the Arabic text, and his own concise German translation, of
this Research into the Faculties of the Soul, in volume 29 for the
year 1875 of the Z.d.D.M.G., together with his critical notes
and exhaustively erudite confrontations of the original Arabic with
many Greek passages from Plato, Aristotle, Alexander Aphrodisias, and
others, that Ibn Sînâ had access to, it would appear, second hand,
i.e. through translations. Doctor Landauer made use also of a very rare
Latin translation by Andreas Alpagus, printed at Venice in 1546; and
of the Cassel second edition of Jehuda Hallévy’s religious Dialogue
entitled Khusari, which is in rabbinical Hebrew, and on pages 385 to
400 of which the views of “philosophers” on the Soul are set forth,
Doctor Landauer having discovered to his agreeable surprise that those
15 pages are simply a word for word excerpt from this Research by Ibn
Sînâ. For the Arabic text itself, he had at his command only two
manuscript copies, the one, preserved in the Library at Leyden, being
very faulty; and the other, in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana at Milan,
being far more accurate and correct.
This text was reprinted talis qualis, but with omission of every kind
of note, in 1884 at Beirût, Syria, by Khalîl Sarkîs: this reprint is
very hard to find.
James Middleton MacDonald, M.A., made a studiedly literal English
translation or rather a construe of it in 1884, of which he got a small
number printed in pamphlet form at Beirût, and by Khalîl Sarkîs also:
this English Version too is very rare, and almost unknown.
* * * * *
My present English rendering of this Essay by Avicena on the Powers of
the Soul has been made directly and finally from the Arabic Original as
given in the Landauer Text, with constant consultation however of both
the Landauer German translation and the MacDonald English construe: it
has been made not for European scholars and Arabists but solely for
pupil students in Egypt, which circumstance called in a great measure
for the use of two or more nearly synonymous words where the Arabic
original often has but one only. Indeed I am not ashamed to say further
that in some places I have failed to follow the drift and understand
the purport of Ibn Sînâ’s argument; so that in such passages I am
only too conscious of how far my rendering may perhaps have wandered
from the right and true sense. But the author himself declares that
psychology is one of the deepest and darkest of studies; and he relates
of himself in his autobiography that he had read one of Aristotle’s
writings forty times over, until he had got it by heart, and yet had
failed to see the point. And he goes on to tell of how it was that
he one day stumbled across and then read over al-Fârâbî’s “Maqâçid
Aristotle,” whereupon mental light dawned upon him as to the purport of
that writing.
Those for whom I have made it now know why this my English version is
often timid and wavering, nay sometimes even wordy and hazy.
* * * * *
The end of the next year’s session will in all likelihood bring with it
the cessation of my connection with the Khedivial School of Law. More
than this: I am getting well on in life, so that this translation will
most likely be the last serious work that I shall ever perform in the
service of Young Egypt. Such reflections awaken in my inmost soul all
sorts of feelings and thoughts about the shortness and fleetingness of
this earthly life, the happiness of childhood and youth, the darkness
of the grave, and the utter despair that will surely engulf the soul
at the last hours, unless--mark my words--unless the strong arm of our
Heavenly Father lay hold upon this soul that is now within me, and
take it off and up, to be joined unto the millions of souls of all,
all those who have gone before, whither too shall follow so many, many
other millions; in a word, unless GOD have mercy upon me, even as He
has had mercy upon my forefathers and mothers since many generations.
This hope in His mercy and grace is my ever-strengthening prop and
stay, the older and feebler I get. Nor will any of those for whom I
write these lines ever find a stronger or a better. And the time will
very soon come when each and every one of them, however long may be his
life here below, will surely need it, to save him from sinking into the
black nothingness of doubt, indifference, and despair.
EDWARD ABBOTT van DYCK.
VERONA, _August, 1906_.
Wer fertig ist, dem ist nichts recht zu machen:
Ein werdender wird immer dankbar sein.[2]
[Lustige Person, in Goethe’s Faust]