1. Euclid and Ptolemy, Hippocrates and Galen, some portion of

Aristotle, and, in addition, an abundant Neo-Platonic

Literature,—indicate the elements of Arabic Natural Philosophy. It is a

popular philosophy, which, chiefly through the instrumentality of the

Sabaeans of Harran, found acceptance with the Shiʻites and other sects,

and which in due course impressed not only court circles, but also a

large body of educated and half-educated people. Stray portions of it

were taken from the writings of the “Logician”,—Aristotle,—e.g. from

the “Meteorology”, from the work “On the Universe”, which has been

attributed to him, from the “Book of Animals”, from the “Psychology”,

and so on; but its general character was determined by

Pythagorean-Platonic teaching, by the Stoics, and by subsequent

astrologers and alchemists. Human curiosity and piety were fain to read

the secrets of the Deity in the book of his Creation, and they

proceeded in this search far beyond practical requirements, which

merely called for a little arithmetic to serve in the division of

inheritances and in trade, and a little astronomy besides, to determine

the proper times for celebrating the functions of religion. Men

hastened to gather wisdom from every quarter, and in so doing they

manifested a conviction, which Masudi accurately expressed, when he

said: “Whatever is good should be recognized, whether it is found in

friend or foe”. Indeed Ali, the prince of believers, is reported to

have said: “The wisdom of the world is the believer’s strayed sheep:

take it back, even though it come from the unbelieving”.

2. Pythagoras is the presiding genius of Mathematical study in Islam.

Greek and Indian elements are mingled in it, it is true, but everything

is regarded from a Neo-Pythagorean point of view. Without studying such

branches of Mathematics, as Arithmetic and Geometry, Astronomy and

Music, no one, they said, becomes a philosopher or an educated

physician. The Theory of Numbers,—prized more highly than Mensuration,

because it appeals less to the outward vision, and should bring the

mind nearer the essence of things,—gave occasion to the most

extravagant puerilities. God is, of course, the great Unity, from whom

everything proceeds, who himself is no number, but who is the First

Cause of Number. But above all, the number Four,—the number of the

elements and so on,—was held in high favour by the philosophers; and

by-and-by nothing in heaven or earth was spoken of or written about,

except in sentences of four clauses and in discourses under four heads.

The transition from Mathematics to Astronomy and Astrology was rapid

and easy. The old Eastern methods, which came into their hands,

continued to be applied even by the court-astrologers of the Omayyads,

but with still greater thoroughness at the Abbasid court. In this way

they arrived at speculations which ran counter to the revealed Faith,

and which therefore could never be approved of by the guardians of

religion. The only antithesis which existed for the Believer was—God

and the World, or this life and the next; but for the Astrologer there

were two worlds, one of the Heavens and another of the Earth, while God

and the life beyond were in the far distance. According to the

different conceptions entertained of the relation which subsisted

between the heavenly bodies and sublunary things, either a rational

Astronomy was developed, or a fantastic Astrology. Only a few kept

entirely free from Astrological delusions. As long, in fact, as the

science was dominated by the Ptolemaic system, it was easier for the

completely uneducated man to jeer at what was absurd in it than it was

for the learned investigator to disprove the same. For the latter

indeed this earth with its forms of life was a product of the forces of

the heavens, a reflection of celestial light, an echo of the eternal

harmony of the Spheres. Those then who ascribed conception and will to

the Spirits of the stars and spheres, held them as the representatives

of Divine providence, and thus traced to their agency both what is good

and what is evil, seeking also to foretell future events from the

situation of their orbs, by means of which they bring their influence

to bear upon earthly things in accordance with steadfast laws. Others,

it is true, had their doubts about this secondary providence, on

grounds of experience and reason, or from the Peripatetic belief that

the blessed existences of the heavens are Spirits of pure intellect,

exalted above conception and will, and in consequence above all

particularity that appeals to the senses, so that their providential

influence is directed only to the good of the whole, but never can have

reference to any individual occurrence.

3. In the domain of Natural Science Muslim learned men collected a rich

body of material; but hardly in any case did they succeed in really

treating it scientifically. In the separate Natural sciences, the

development of which we cannot follow up in this place, they clung to

traditional systems. To establish the wisdom of God and the operations

of Nature,—which was regarded as a power or emanation of the

World-Soul,—alchemistic experiments were instituted, the magical

virtues of talismans tested, the effects of Music upon the emotions of

men and animals investigated, and observations made on physiognomy,

while attempts were also set on foot to explain the wonders of the life

of sleep and of dreams, as well as those of soothsaying and prophecy,

&c. As might be expected, the centre of interest was Man, as the

Microcosm which must combine in itself all the elements and powers of

the world together. The essential part of Man’s being was held to be

the Soul; and its relation to the World-Soul, and its future lot were

made subjects of enquiry. There was also a good deal of speculation

about the faculties of the soul and their localization in the heart and

the brain. One or two adhered to Galen, but others went farther than he

did, and made out five inner senses corresponding to the five outer

ones,—a theory which, along with similar natural mysteries, was traced

to Apollonius of Tyana.

Obviously the most diverse attitudes towards religious doctrine were

possible in the study of Mathematical and Physical Science. But the

propaedeutic sciences, as soon as they came forward on their own

account, were always dangerous to the Faith. The assumption of the

eternity of the world, and of an uncreated matter in motion from all

eternity,—was readily combined with Astronomy. And if the movement of

the Heavens is eternal, so too are, no doubt, the changes which take

place on earth. All the kingdoms of Nature then, according to many

teachers, being eternal, the race of man is eternal also, wheeling

round and round in an orbit of its own. There is therefore nothing new

in the world: the views and ideas of men repeat themselves like

everything else. All that can possibly be done, maintained or known,

has already been and will again be.

Admirable discourse and lamentation were expended upon this theme,

without much advancing thereby the interests of Science.

4. The science of Medicine, which on obvious grounds was favoured by

the ruling powers, appears to have proved somewhat more useful. Its

interests furnished one of the reasons, and not the least considerable,

which induced the Caliphs to commission so many men to translate Greek

authors. It is therefore not to be wondered at that the teachings of

Mathematics and Natural Science, together with Logic, also affected

Medicine intimately. The old-fashioned doctor was disposed to be

satisfied with time-honoured magical formulae, and other empirical

expedients; but modern society in the ninth century required

philosophical knowledge in the physician. He had to know the “natures”

of foods, stimulants or luxuries, and medicaments, the humours of the

body, and in every case the influence of the stars. The physician was

brother to the astrologer, whose knowledge commanded his respect,

because it had a more exalted object than medical practice. He had to

attend the lectures of the alchemist, and to practise his art in

accordance with the methods of Mathematics and Logic. It was not enough

for the fanatics of education in the ninth century that a man had to

speak, believe and behave in accordance with Qiyas,—that is to say,

with logical correctness: he must, over and above, submit to be treated

medically in accordance with Qiyas. The principles of Medicine were

discussed in learned assemblies at the court of Wathik (842–847) like

the foundations of Doctrine and Morals. The question, in fact, was

asked, prompted by a work of Galen’s, whether Medicine relies upon

tradition, experience or rational knowledge, or whether on the other

hand it derives its support from the principles of Mathematics and

Natural Science by means of logical deduction (Qiyas).

5. The Natural Philosophy, which has just been rapidly sketched,

actually stood for Philosophy with the most of the scholars of the

ninth century, as contrasted with theological dialectic, and was styled

Pythagorean. It lasted even into the tenth century, when its most

important representative was the famous physician Razi († 923 or 932).

Born in Rai he received a mathematical education and studied Medicine

and Natural Philosophy with great diligence. He was averse to dialectic

and was only acquainted with Logic as far as the categorical figures of

the First Analytics. After having practised as director of the hospital

in his native city and in Bagdad, he entered upon his travels and

resided at various princely courts, amongst others at the court of the

Samanid Mansur ibn Ishaq, to whom he dedicated a work on Medicine.

Razi has a high opinion of the medical profession and of the study

which it demands. The wisdom of a thousand years, contained in books,

he prizes more than the experiences of the individual man gained in one

short life, but he prefers even these to deductions of the “Logicians”

which have not been tested by experience.

He thinks that the relation between the body and the soul is determined

by the soul. And seeing that in this way the circumstances and

sufferings of the soul admit of being discerned by means of the

physiognomy, the medical man has to be at the same time a physician of

the soul. Therefore he drew up a system of spiritual medicine,—a kind

of Dietetic of the Soul. The precepts of Muslim law, like the

prohibition of wine, and so on, gave him no concern, but his

freethinking seems to have led him into pessimism. In fact he found

more evil than good in the world, and described inclination as the

absence of disinclination.

High though the value was which Razi put upon Aristotle and Galen, he

did not give himself any special trouble to gain a more profound

comprehension of their works. He was a devoted student of Alchemy,

which in his view was a true art, based on the existence of a primeval

matter,—an art indispensable to philosophers, and which, he believed,

had been practised by Pythagoras, Democritus, Plato, Aristotle and

Galen. In opposition to Peripatetic teaching he assumed that the body

contained in itself the principle of movement, a thought which might

certainly have proved a fruitful one in Natural Science, if it had been

recognized and farther developed.

Razi’s Metaphysic starts from old doctrines, which his contemporaries

ascribed to Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Mani and others. At the apex of his

system stand five co-eternal principles,—the Creator, the Universal

Soul, the First or Primeval matter, Absolute Space, and Absolute Time

or Eternal Duration. In these the necessary conditions of the actually

existing world are given. The individual sense-perceptions, generally,

presuppose an existing Matter, just as the grouping of different

perceived objects postulates Space. Perceptions of change farther

constrain us to assume the condition of Time. The existence of living

beings leads us to recognize a Soul; and the fact that some of these

living beings are endowed with Reason, i.e.—have the faculty of

bringing the Arts to the highest perfection,—necessitates our belief in

a wise Creator, whose Reason has ordered everything for the best.

Notwithstanding the eternity of his five principles, Razi thus speaks

of a Creator and even gives a story of Creation. First then a simple,

pure, spiritual Light was created, the material of Souls, which are

simple, spiritual substances, of the nature of Light. That

Light-material or Upper-world, from which souls descended, is also

called Reason, or Light of the Light of God. The Light is followed by

the Shadow, from which the Animal Soul is created, for the service of

the Rational Soul. But simultaneously with the simple, spiritual light,

there existed from the first a composite form, which is Body, from the

shadow of which now issue the four “natures”, Warmth and Cold, Dryness

and Moistness. From these four natures at last are formed all heavenly

and earthly bodies. The whole process, however, is in operation from

all eternity, without beginning in time, for God was never inactive.

That Razi was an astrologer is plain from his own utterances. The

heavenly bodies consist indeed, according to him, of the same elements

as earthly things, and the latter are continually exposed to the

influences of the former.

6. Razi had to maintain a polemical attitude in two directions. On the

one side he impugned the Muslim Unity of God, which could not bear to

be associated with any eternal soul, matter, space or time; and on the

other side he attacked the Dahrite system, which does not acknowledge

any Creator of the world. This system, which is frequently mentioned by

Muslim authors, with due aversion of course, appears to have found

numerous representatives, though none of any importance. The adherents

of the ‘Dahr’ (v. I, 2, § 2) are represented to us as Materialists,

Sensualists, Atheists, Believers in the transmigration of souls, and so

on; but we learn nothing more definite about their doctrines. In any

case the Dahrites had no need to trace all that exists to a principle

which was of spiritual essence and creative efficiency. Muslim

Philosophy, on the other hand, did stand in need of such a principle,

if it should only conform in some degree to the teaching of the faith.

Natural Philosophy was not suited for the furtherance of this object,

as it showed more interest in the manifold and often contrary

operations of Nature than in the One Cause of all. Such aim was better

attained by Neo-Platonic Aristotelianism, whose logico-metaphysical

speculations endeavoured to trace all existence to one highest

existence, or to derive all things from one supreme operative

principle. But before we attend to this direction of thought, which

commenced to appear even in the ninth century, we have still to give

some account of an attempt to blend Natural Philosophy and the

teachings of the Faith into a Philosophy of Religion.

2. The Faithful Brethren of Basra.

1. In the East, where every religion formed a State within the State, a

political party invariably made its appearance in the additional

character of a religious sect, just to gain adherents in some way or

other. As a matter of principle indeed, Islam knew no distinction

between men,—no caste or social standing. But property and education

have the same influence everywhere; and in their train degrees of piety

and stages of knowledge began to be set up, according as a community or

party permitted of adjustment. Thus there arose secret societies having

different grades, of which the highest and perhaps the next highest

possessed an esoteric doctrine, which borrowed a good deal from the

Natural Philosophy of the Neo-Pythagoreans. In furtherance of their

object, which was to conquer political power, every expedient was

regarded as lawful. For the initiated the Koran was explained

allegorically. They traced their mystic lore, it is true, back to

prophets with Biblical and Koranic names, but heathen philosophers were

at the bottom of it all. Philosophy was completely transformed into a

mythology of politics. The high intelligences and souls, which

theoretic thinkers had recognized in the stars and planets, embodied

themselves in human beings for the work of actual Politics; and it was

declared to be a religious duty to assist these embodied intelligences

in the establishment of an earthly kingdom of righteousness. The

associations which acted in this way may best be compared to societies,

which up to the days of Saint-Simonism and kindred phenomena in last

century were wont to appear in countries where freedom of thought was

restricted.

In the second half of the ninth century Abdallah ibn Maimun, head of

the Karmatite party, was the originator of a movement of this kind. He

was a Persian oculist, trained in the school of the Natural

Philosophers. He proved able to associate both believers and

freethinkers in a confederacy to endeavour to compass the overthrow of

the Abbasid government. To the one set he was a conjurer, to the other

a pious ascetic or learned philosopher. His colours were white, because

his religion was that of the pure light, to which the soul was to

ascend after its earthly wanderings. The duties inculcated were

contempt for the body, disregard of the Material, community of goods

for all the confederate brethren, as well as self-surrender to the

confederacy, and fidelity and obedience to their chiefs, even to

death,—for the society had its grades. In accordance with the sequence

of existence, viz., God, Reason, Soul, Space and Time, they conceived

the revelation of God to be made in history and in the constitution of

their own brotherhood.

2. The chief homes of Karmatite activity were Basra and Kufa. Now we

find in Basra in the second half of the tenth century a small

association of men, whose confederacy aims at having four grades. We do

not know, to be sure, how far the brethren succeeded in realizing the

ideal organization of their confederacy. To the first grade belong

young men of from 15 to 30 years of age, whose souls are being formed

in the natural way: these must be completely submissive to their

teachers. The second grade,—from 30 to 40 years of age—are introduced

to secular wisdom, and receive an analogical knowledge of things. In

the third grade,—from 40 to 50 years of age—the Divine law of the world

becomes known in more adequate form: that constitutes the stage of the

prophets. Finally, in the highest grade, when one is over 50 years old,

he comes to see the true reality of things, just like the blessed

angels: he is exalted then above Nature, Doctrine and Law.

From this brotherhood there has come down to us a

progressively-advancing Encyclopaedia of the Sciences of that day. It

consists of 51 (originally perhaps 50) treatises, the contents of which

are of such varied nature and origin that the redactors or compilers

have not succeeded in establishing a complete harmony among them. In

general, however, there is found in this Encyclopaedia an eclectic

Gnosticism built on a foundation of Natural Science, and provided with

a political background. The scheme sets out with mathematical

considerations, continually playing with numbers and letters, and

proceeds through Logic and Physics,—referring everything, however, to

the Soul and its powers,—in order to approach at last, in a mystical

and magical fashion, the knowledge of the Godhead. The whole

representation is that of the doctrine of a persecuted sect, with the

political features peeping out here and there. We see also something of

suffering and struggle,—something of the oppressions to which the men

of this Encyclopaedia or their predecessors were exposed, and something

of the hope they cherished and the patience they preached. They seek in

this spiritualistic philosophy, consolation or redemption: It is their

religion. ‘Faithful to death,’—so runs the expression—shall the

brethren be, for to meet death for a friend’s welfare, is the true Holy

war. In life’s pilgrimage through this world,—thus the obligatory

journey to Mecca is allegorized—, one must aid the other by all the

means in his power. The rich must communicate to others a share of

their material goods, and the wise a share of their intellectual

possessions. But yet knowledge, as we have it in the Encyclopaedia, was

probably reserved for initiated members of the highest grade.

It must be allowed, however, that this confraternity of the Faithful

Brethren of Basra seems to have led a quiet existence, as perhaps was

the case also with a branch-settlement of theirs in Bagdad. The

relation of the Brethren to the Karmatites may have resembled that of

the more peaceful Baptists to the revolutionary Anabaptists of the

‘King of Sion’. [14]

The names of the following have been given to us by later writers, as

having been members of the Brotherhood and collaborators of the

Encyclopaedia, viz.: Abu Sulaiman Mohammed ibn Mushir al-Busti, called

al-Muqaddasi; Abu-l-Hasan Ali ibn Harun al-Zandjani; Mohammed ibn

Akhmed al-Nahradjuri; Al-Aufi and Zaid ibn Rifaa. In the time of their

activity the Caliphate had already been forced to make an entire

surrender of its secular power into the hands of the Shiʻite dynasty of

the Buyids. Probably this circumstance was favourable to the appearance

of an Encyclopaedia, in which Shiʻite and Mutazilite doctrines together

with the results of Philosophy were comprehended in one popular system.

3. The Brethren themselves avow their eclecticism. They wish to collect

the wisdom of all nations and religions. Noah and Abraham, Socrates and

Plato, Zoroaster and Jesus, Mohammed and Ali are all prophets of

theirs. Socrates, and Jesus and his apostles, no less than the children

of Ali, are honoured as holy martyrs of their rational faith. The

religious law in its literal sense is pronounced good for the ordinary

man,—a medicine for weak and ailing souls: the deeper philosophic

insight is for strong intelligences. Though the body is devoted to

death, dying means rising again to the pure life of the Spirit, for

those who during their earthly existence have been awakened by means of

philosophic considerations out of careless slumber and foolish sleep.

This is impressed with endless repetition, by means of legends and

myths of later-Greek, Judaeo-Christian, Persian or Indian origin. Every

transitory thing is here turned into an emblem. On the ruins of

positive religion and unsophisticated opinion a spiritualistic

philosophy is built up, embracing all the knowledge and endeavour of

human kind, so far as these came within the Brethren’s field of view.

The aim of their philosophizing is given as ‘the assimilation of the

soul to God, in the degree possible for man’.

In this scheme, the negative tendencies of the Brethren, are kept

somewhat in the background, for reasons which are quite intelligible.

But their criticism of human society and of positive religions is

exhibited with least reserve in the ‘Book of the Animal and the Man’,

in which the figurative dress makes it possible for them to represent

animals as saying what might he questionable if heard from a human

mouth.

4. The eclectic character of the scheme, and the far from systematic

method adopted in its subdivisions render it difficult to give a

coherent exposition of the philosophy of the Brethren. But still the

most important tenets, though sometimes loosely connected, must here be

set forth with a measure of order.

The mental activity of Man falls to be divided, according to the

Encyclopaedia, into Art and Science. Now Science or Knowledge is the

form assumed within the knowing soul by that which is known, or a

higher, finer, more intellectual mode of existence of whatever is

realized in outward substance. Art on the other hand consists in

projecting the form from the artist-soul into matter. Knowledge is

potentially present in the soul of the disciple, but it becomes actual

only through the teaching activity of a master, who carries knowledge

as a reality within his own mind. But whence did it come to the first

master? The Brethren answer, that according to the philosophers he

gained it by his own reflection, while, according to the theologians,

he received it through prophetic illumination; “but in our view there

are various ways or instrumentalities by which knowledge may be

attained. From the intermediate position of the soul, between the

worlds of body and of mind it results that there are open to it three

ways or sources of knowledge. Thus by means of the senses the soul is

made acquainted with what is beneath it, and through logical inference

with what is above it, and finally with itself by rational

consideration or direct intuition. Of these kinds of knowledge the

surest and the most deserving of preference is knowledge of one’s self.

When human knowledge attempts to go farther than this, it proves itself

to be limited in many ways. Therefore one must not philosophize

straight away about questions like the origin or the eternity of the

world, but make his first essays with what is simpler. And only through

renunciation of the world, and righteous conduct, does the soul lift

itself gradually up to the pure knowledge of the Highest.”

5. After secular instruction in Grammar, Poetry and History, and after

religious education and doctrine, philosophic study should begin with

the mathematical branches. Here everything is set forth in

Neo-Pythagorean and Indian fashion. Not only numbers but even the

letters of the alphabet are employed in childish trifling. It was

particularly convenient for the Brethren that the number of letters in

the Arabic alphabet is 28, or 4 multiplied by 7. Instead of proceeding

according to practical and real points of view, they give the rein to

fancy in all the sciences, in accordance with grammatical analogies and

relations of numbers. Their Arithmetic does not investigate Number as

such, but rather its significance. No search is made for any more

suitable mode of expressing number in the case of phenomena; but things

are themselves explained in accordance with the system of numbers. The

Theory of number is Divine wisdom, and is above Things, for things are

only formed after the pattern of numbers. The absolute principle of all

existence and thought is the number One. The science of number,

therefore, is found at the beginning, middle, and end of all

philosophy. Geometry, with its figures addressing the eye, serves

merely to make it more easily understood by beginners, but Arithmetic

alone is true and pure science. And yet Geometry too is divided into a

sensible form of it which deals with lines, surfaces and solids, and a

pure or spiritual form which treats of the dimensions or properties of

things, such as length, breadth and depth. The object both of

Arithmetic and Geometry is to conduct the soul from the sensible to the

spiritual.

First of all then they lead us to consider the stars. Now the

Encyclopaedia offers us, in its Astrology,—and nothing else could be

expected—teaching which is exceedingly fantastic and sometimes

self-contradictory. The whole of it is pervaded by the conviction that

the stars not merely foretell the future, but directly influence or

bring about every thing that happens beneath the moon. Fortune and

misfortune come equally from them. Jupiter, Venus and the Sun bring

fortune; misfortune is brought, on the other hand, by Saturn, Mars and

the Moon; while the effects produced by the planet Mercury have in them

both bad and good. Mercury is the lord of education and science: we owe

to him our knowledge, which comprises bad and good. In the same way too

the other planets have all their several spheres of influence; and man

in the course of life, if he is not prematurely snatched away,

experiences successively the influences of the whole of the heavenly

bodies. The Moon causes his body to grow and Mercury forms his mind.

Then he comes under the sway of Venus. The Sun gives him family, riches

or dominion; Mars, bravery and noble-mindedness. Thereupon, under the

guidance of Jupiter, he prepares, by means of religious exercises, for

the journey to the world beyond, and he attains rest under the

influence of Saturn. Many men, however, do not live long enough, or are

not enabled by circumstances, to develope their natural capacities in

unbroken sequence. God therefore graciously sends them his prophets, by

whose teaching they may, even in a short time and under unfavourable

circumstances, form their natures completely.

6. According to the Encyclopaedia, Logic is related to Mathematics. In

fact just as Mathematics conducts from the sensible to the

intellectual, so Logic takes an intermediate position between Physics

and Metaphysics. In Physics we have to do with bodies; in Metaphysics,

with pure Spirits; but Logic treats of the ideas of the latter as well

as of the representations of the former in our soul. Yet in range and

importance Logic is inferior to Mathematics. For the subject of

Mathematics is regarded not merely as an intermediary, but also as the

essence of the All, while on the other hand Logic remains completely

restricted to psychic forms as an intermediary between body and mind.

Things are regulated by numbers, but our presentations and ideas by

things.

The logical observations of the Brethren start from Porphyry’s

Introduction, and the Categories, the Hermeneutics and the Analytics of

Aristotle. They present nothing original, or very little.

To the five terms of Porphyry, a sixth,—the ‘Individual’—is added, no

doubt for the sake of symmetry. Three of these,—Genus, Species,

Individual,—are then called Objective Qualifications and

three,—Difference, Property, Accident—Abstract or Conceptional

Qualifications. The Categories are Genus-conceptions, of which the

first is Substance, the other nine denoting its Accidents. The whole

system of Concepts is farther developed by a division into species. But

besides Division, there are three additional logical methods in use:

Analysis, Definition and Deduction. Analysis is the method for

beginners, because it permits a knowledge of what is individual. More

subtle, however, as disclosing to us what is spiritual,—are Definition

and Deduction, the former investigating the essential nature of

Species, and the latter that of Genera. The Senses apprise us of the

existence of things; but acquaintance with the essence of things is

gained by reflection. The information which is conveyed to us by the

senses is small, as it were the letters of the alphabet. Of greater

importance considerably are the principles of rational knowledge, just

as words have more significance than letters; but the most important

knowledge of all, lies in the propositions which have been derived from

those principles, and which the human mind gains for itself or

appropriates, in contradistinction to that knowledge which Nature or

the Divine revelation has imparted to it.

7. From God, the highest Being, who is exalted above all distinctions

and oppositions both of the Material and the Spiritual, the whole world

is derived by the path of Emanation. If now and again a Creation is

spoken of, that is only to be understood as a form of adaptation to

theological language. The gradation then of the Emanations is exhibited

as follows: 1. The Creative Spirit (νοῦς, ʻaql); 2. The Passive Spirit,

or the All-Soul or World-Soul; 3. The First Material; 4. The Operative

Nature, a power of the World-Soul; 5. The Absolute Body, called also,

the Second Material; 6. The World of the Spheres; 7. The Elements of

the Sublunary World; 8. The Minerals, Plants and Animals composed of

these elements. These then are the eight Essences which,—together with

God, the Absolute One, who is in everything and with

everything—complete the series of Original Essences corresponding to

the nine Cardinal Numbers.

Spirit, Soul, Original Matter, and Nature are simple; but with Body we

enter the realm of the Composite. Here all is composed of Matter and

Form, or,—to adopt another principle of division,—of Substance and

Accident. The first Substances are Matter and Form; the first Accidents

or Properties, Space, Motion and Time, to which in the opinion of the

Brethren may perhaps be added Tone and Light. Matter is one; all

plurality and diversity come from the Forms. Substance is designated

also as the constitutive, material Form, while Accident is the

completing, spiritual Form. The Encyclopaedia does not express itself

clearly on these points. But in any case Substantiality is looked for

rather in the Universal than in the Particular, and Form is put before

Matter. The Substantial Form, like a spectre, frightens off every

attempt of the philosopher to investigate thoroughly the domain of the

Material. The Forms wander at their own sweet will like lords through

the lower world of Matter. No trace is discoverable of any inner

relation between Matter and Form. Not only in thought, but also in

reality they keep themselves separate.

From the account which has been given an idea may now be formed of the

story of Nature as the Brethren viewed it. They have been represented

as the Darwinists of the tenth century, but nothing could more

inappropriate. The various realms of Nature, it is true, yield

according to the Encyclopaedia an ascending and connected series; but

the relation is determined not by bodily structure, but by the inner

Form or Soul-Substance. The Form wanders in mystic fashion from the

lower to the higher and vice versa, not in accordance with inner laws

of formation, or modified to suit external conditions, but in

accordance with the influences of the stars, and, in the case of Man at

least, in accordance with practical and theoretical behaviour. To give

a history of Evolution in the modern sense of the term was very far

from the thought of the Brethren. For example they expressly insist

that the horse and the elephant resemble Man more than the ape does,

although the bodily likeness is greater in the last-named. In fact in

their system the body is a matter of quite secondary consideration: the

death of the body is called the birth of the soul. The soul alone is an

efficient existence, which procures the body for itself.

8. The teaching of the Brethren concerning Nature is therefore merged

almost completely in Psychology. Let us confine ourselves here to the

human soul. It stands in the centre of the All; and just as the World

is a huge man, Man is a little world.

The human soul has emanated from the World-soul; and the souls of all

individuals taken together constitute a substance which might be

denominated the Absolute Man or the Spirit of Humanity. Every

individual soul, however, is involved in Matter, and must gradually be

formed into spirit. To that end it possesses many faculties or powers,

and of these the speculative faculties are the choicest, for knowledge

is the very life of the soul.

The soul of the child is at first like a white sheet of paper. What the

five senses convey to it is first presented, then judged, and lastly

stored up, in the front, middle, and hinder parts of the brain

respectively. Through the faculty of speech and the art of writing,

which make up the number of the internal senses to five, corresponding

to the number of the External, the contents of Presentation are then

realized.

Among the external senses, Hearing takes precedence of Sight; for

Sight, a mere slave of the moment, is occupied with what is actually

present to the sense, whereas Hearing apprehends also what is past, and

is conscious of the harmony of the tuneful spheres. Hearing and Sight

constitute the group of the intellectual senses, whose effect must

continue time without end.

While Man then possesses the external senses in common with the lower

animals, the specific nature of human reason is notified in Judgment,

Speech and Action. Reason judges of good and bad, and in conformity

with that judgment the will is determined. But in particular the

significance which Language has for the soul’s life of cognition is to

be emphasised. A concept which cannot be denoted by some expression in

some language is not thinkable at all. The word is the body of the

thought, which cannot exist absolutely per se.

But it is difficult to see how this understanding of the relation

between concept and expression is to square with other opinions of the

Brethren.

9. At its highest stage the teaching of the Brethren becomes a

Philosophy of Religion. Its purpose is a reconciliation between Science

and Life, Philosophy and Faith. Now in these matters men differ

greatly. The ordinary man requires a sensuous worship of God; but just

as the souls of animals and plants are beneath the soul of the ordinary

man, so above it are the souls of the philosopher and the prophet with

whom the pure angel is associated. In the higher stages the soul is

raised also above the lower popular religion with its sensuous

conceptions and usages.

No doubt Christianity and the Zoroastrian faith appeared to the

Brethren to be more perfect religious revelations. ‘Our Prophet,

Mohammed’, they said, ‘was sent to an uncivilized people, composed of

dwellers in the desert, who neither possessed a proper conception of

the beauty of this world, nor of the spiritual character of the world

beyond. The crude expressions of the Koran, which are adapted to the

understanding of that people, must be understood in a spiritual sense

by those who are more cultured’.

But the truth is not presented in its purity even in the other national

religions. There is a rational faith above them all for which the

Brethren moreover tried to find a metaphysical derivation. Between God

and his first creature, the Creative Spirit, there is interposed by way

of hypostasis the Divine World-Law (nâmûs). That World-Law extends over

everything, and is the wise arrangement of a merciful Creator, who

intends evil to no one. Belief in a God of Anger, in the punishment of

Hell and the like, the Brethren declare to be irrational. Such a faith

does harm to the soul. The ignorant sinful soul finds its hell even in

this life and in its own body. On the other hand, Resurrection is the

separation of the soul from its body, and the great Resurrection at the

last day is the separation of the Universal soul from the world, and

its return to God. This turning to God indeed is the aim in all

religions.

10. The ethical system of the Brethren has an ascetic, spiritualistic

character, although here too their eclecticism is shewn. According to

it man is acting rightly, when he follows his proper nature;

‘praiseworthy is the free act of the soul; admirable are the actions

which have proceeded from rational consideration; and lastly, obedience

to the Divine World-Law is worthy of the reward of being raised to the

celestial world of spheres. But this requires longing for what is

above; and therefore the highest virtue is Love, which strives after

union with God, the first loved one, and which is evinced even in this

life in the form of religious patience and forbearance with all created

beings. Such love gains in this life serenity of soul, freedom of heart

and peace with the whole world, and in the life to come ascension to

Eternal Light.’

After all this we need not wonder that the body was depreciated a good

deal. ‘Our true essence is the soul, and the highest aim of our

existence should be to live, with Socrates, devoted to the Intellect,

and with Christ, to the Law of Love. Nevertheless the body must be

properly treated and looked after in order that the soul may have time

to attain its full development.’ In this view the Brethren set up an

ideal type of human culture, whereof the features were borrowed from

the characteristics of various nations. ‘The ideal, and morally perfect

man, should be of East-Persian derivation, Arabic in faith, of Irak,

i.e. Babylonian, education, a Hebrew in astuteness, a disciple of

Christ in conduct, as pious as a Syrian Monk, a Greek in the individual

sciences, an Indian in the interpretation of all mysteries, but lastly

and especially, a Sufi in his whole spiritual life.’

11. The attempt to establish in this way a reconciliation between

knowledge and faith satisfied neither side. Theological dialecticians

looked down upon the interpretation of the Koran given by the Brethren,

just as the divines of our day look down upon the N. T. exegesis of

Count Tolstoi. And the more rigid Aristotelians regarded the

Pythagorean-Platonic tendency of the Encyclopaedia much as a modern

professor of philosophy is wont to look upon Spiritism, Occultism, and

phenomena of that nature. But the writings, or at any rate the

opinions, of the Faithful Brethren of Basra have exercised an important

influence on the great body of the educated or half-educated world,—an

influence to which eloquent attestation is borne by the very fact that

so many manuscripts, mostly of recent date, are to be met with, of this

extensive Encyclopaedia. Among many sects within the world of Islam,

such as the Batinites, the Ismaelites, the Assassins, the Druses, or

whatever may be their names, we find again the same doctrines in the

main. In this form Greek wisdom has best succeeded in making itself at

home in the East, while the Aristotelian School-Philosophy would only

thrive, with few exceptions, in the hothouse-cultivation bestowed upon

it at the courts of princely patrons. The great religious father,

Gazali, is ready enough to toss aside the wisdom of the Brethren as

mere popular philosophy, but he does not hesitate to take over what was

good in them. He owes more to their body of ideas than he would perhaps

have cared to avow. And their treatises have been turned to profit by

others besides, particularly in Encyclopaediac works. The influence of

the Encyclopaedia continues even yet in the Muslim East. In vain was it

burned in Bagdad in the year 1150, along with the writings of Ibn Sina.

IV. THE NEO-PLATONIC ARISTOTELIANS OF THE EAST.

1. Kindi. [15]

1. Kindi is related in various ways to the Mutazilite Dialecticians and

the Neo-Pythagorean Natural-Philosophers of his time, and we might

therefore have dealt with him among the latter, even before Razi (v.

III, 1, § 5). But yet tradition with one accord represents him as the

first Peripatetic in Islam. What justification exists for this

traditionary view will be seen in what follows, so far as an inference

can be drawn from the few and imperfectly-preserved writings of this

philosopher which have come down to us.

Abu Yaqub ibn Ishaq al-Kindi (i.e. of the tribe of Kinda) was of

Arabian origin, and therefore was called the “Arabian” philosopher, to

distinguish him from the numerous non-Arab associates of his, who had

taken to the study of secular wisdom. He traced his genealogy to the

old Kinda princes, although whether he was entitled to do so we need

not seek to decide. The South-Arabian tribe of Kinda was in any case

farther advanced in outward civilization than other tribes. Many

Kindite families too had for long been settlers in Iraq (Babylonia);

and there, in the town of Kufa, of which his father was governor, our

philosopher was born, probably in the beginning of the ninth century.

He received his education, it would appear, partly in Basra, and

thereafter in Bagdad, and therefore in the headquarters of the culture

of his time. Here he came to put a higher value upon Persian

civilization and Greek wisdom than upon old Arab virtue and the Muslim

faith. He maintained even,—no doubt, following others—, that Kakhtan,

the ancestor of the South-Arabians was a brother of Yaunan’s, from whom

the Greeks were descended. It was possible to make an observation of

that kind in Bagdad at the Abbasid court, for there they knew of no

nationality, and regarded the ancient Greeks with admiration.

It is not known how long Kindi remained at court, or what position he

held there. He is mentioned as a translator of Greek works into Arabic,

and is said to have revised and improved translations made by others,

for example, in the case of the so-called “Theology of Aristotle”.

Numerous servants and disciples, whose names have been handed down to

us, were probably set to this work under his supervision. Farther, he

may have rendered services to the court in the capacity of astrologer

or physician, and perhaps even in the administration of the revenues.

But in later years he was dismissed, when he with others was made to

suffer from the restoration of orthodoxy under Mutawakkil (847–861);

and his library was for a long time confiscated. As regards personal

character, tradition reproaches him with having been niggardly,—a

stigma, however, which appears to have rested upon many other literary

men and lovers of books.

The year of Kindi’s death is as little known as that of his birth. He

appears thus to have been out of court-favour when he died, or at least

to have been in a subordinate position. It is strange that Masudi (v.

II, 4 § 4), who had a great regard for him, is utterly silent on this

point; but it seems in the highest degree probable from one of his

astrological treatises that he was still alive subsequent to the year

870. The expiry of some petty astronomical cycle was imminent at that

date, and this was being utilized by the Karmatites for the overthrow

of the reigning family. In this matter, however, Kindi was loyal enough

to make out the prolongation, for about 450 years, of the State’s

existence, menaced though it was by a planetary conjunction. His

princely patron might well be satisfied; and history conformed to the

time predicted, to within half-a-century. [16]

2. Kindi was a man of extraordinary erudition, a Polyhistor: he had

absorbed the whole learning and culture of his time. But although he

may have set down and communicated observations of his own as a

geographer, a historian of civilization and a physician, he was in no

respect a creative genius. His theological views bear a Mutazilite

stamp. He wrote specially on Man’s power of action, and the time of its

appearance, i.e. whether it was before the act or whether it was

synchronous with the act. The righteousness and the unity of God he

expressly emphasized. In opposition to the theory,—known at that time

as Indian or Brahmanic,—that Reason is the sole and sufficient source

of knowledge, he defended prophecy, while yet he sought to bring it

into harmony with reason. His acquaintance with various systems of

religion impelled him to compare them together, and he found as a

common element in them all the belief that the world was the work of a

First Cause, One and Eternal, for whom our knowledge furnishes us with

no more precise designation. It is however the duty of the discerning

to recognize this First Cause as divine; and God himself has shewn them

the way thereto, and has sent them ambassadors to bear witness for him,

who are instructed to promise everlasting bliss to the obedient, and to

threaten corresponding punishment to those who do not obey.

3. Kindi’s actual philosophy, like that of his contemporaries,

consists, first and especially, of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy,

in which Neo-Platonism and Neo-Pythagoreanism merge into one another.

According to him no one can be a philosopher without studying

Mathematics. Fanciful play upon letters and numbers is frequently met

with in his writings. Mathematics he also applied to Medicine in his

theory of the compound remedies. In fact he based the efficacy of these

remedies, like the effect of music, upon geometrical proportion. It is

here a matter of the proportionality of the sensible qualities, warm,

cold, dry and moist. If a remedy has to be warm in the first degree, it

must possess double the warmth of the equable mixture,—in the second

degree, four times as much, and so on. Kindi seems to have entrusted

the decision of this point to Sense, particularly to the sense of

Taste, so that in him we might have a hint of the proportional relation

existing between stimulus and sensation. Yet that view, though quite

original, was with him a mere piece of mathematical play. However,

Cardan, a philosopher of the Renaissance, on the ground of this

doctrine, reckoned him among the twelve most subtle-minded thinkers.

4. In Kindi’s opinion, as has already been said, the world is a work of

God, but His influence in its descent is transmitted through many

intermediate agencies. All higher existence affects the lower, but that

which is caused has no influence upon its cause, standing as this does

above it in the scale of Being. In all the events of the world there is

a pervading causality, which makes it possible for us, from our

knowledge of the cause, to foretell the future,—for example, of the

positions of the heavenly bodies. Farther, in any single existing

thing, if it is thoroughly known, we possess a mirror, in which we may

behold the entire scheme of things.

It is to the Spirit or Mind that the higher reality and all activity

belong, and matter has to dispose itself in conformity with the desire

of the Spirit. Midway between the Spirit of God and the material and

bodily world stands the Soul, and it is the Soul which first called

into being the world of the Spheres. From this Soul of the world the

Human Soul is an emanation. In its nature, that is, in its operations,

it is bound to the body with which it is united, but in its spiritual

essence it is independent of the body; and thus the influences of the

stars, which are limited to physical occurrences, do not affect it.

Kindi goes on to say that our Soul is an uncompounded, imperishable

substance, descended from the world of reason into that of the senses,

but endowed with a recollection of its earlier condition. It does not

feel at home here, for it has many needs, the satisfaction of which is

denied to it, and which consequently are attended with painful

emotions. Verily there is nothing constant in this world of coming and

going, in which we may be deprived at any moment of what we love. Only

in the world of reason is stability to be found. If then we desire to

see our wishes fulfilled, and would not be deprived of what is dear to

us, we must turn to the eternal blessings of reason, to the fear of

God, to science, and to good works. But if we follow merely after

material possessions in the belief that we can retain them, we are

pursuing an object which does not really exist.

5. Kindi’s theory of knowing corresponds to the ethical and

metaphysical duality of the sensible and the spiritual. According to it

our knowledge is either knowledge conveyed by the senses, or knowledge

acquired by the reason: that which lies between,—the Fancy or

Imagination,—is called a mediating faculty. The senses, then, apprehend

the Particular, or the material Form, but the reason conceives the

Universal,—species and genera, or the spiritual Form. And just as that

which is perceived is one with Sense-Perception, so too that which is

conceived by the reason is one with Reason itself.

Here then emerges for the first time the doctrine of the Reason or of

the Spirit or Mind, (νοῦς, ʻaql) in a form in which, merely modified

somewhat, it occupies a large space with the later Muslim philosophers.

It continued to be a characteristic feature of philosophy in Islam

throughout its whole course. And just as in the controversy regarding

Universals in the Christian Middle Ages an objective and scientific

interest is made evident also, so in the philosophical discussions of

the Muslims concerning the thinking Spirit, the subjective requirement

of intellectual culture is brought conspicuously to the front.

Kindi has a fourfold division of the Spirit [17]: first the Spirit

which is ever real,—the Cause and the Essence of all that is spiritual

in the world,—thus without doubt God or the First Spirit produced;

second, Spirit as the Reasoning capacity or Potentiality of the human

soul; third, as the Habit or actual possession of the soul, which it

can make use of at any moment, just as, for example, the writer can

make use of his art; fourth and last, as Activity, by which a reality

within the soul may be carried over to the reality that is without. The

Activity last named appears, according to Kindi, to be the act of man

himself, while to the First Cause,—to the ever-existing Spirit,—he

ascribes the carrying of Potentiality into Habit, or the realisation of

the Possible. The real Spirit or Mind we have thus received from above,

and the third ʻaql is therefore called ʻaql mustafad, (Lat. intellectus

adeptus sive adquisitus). The fundamental view of antiquity—that all

our knowledge about things must come from a source outside of us—,

runs, in the form of this doctrine of the ʻaql mustafad or Spirit which

we receive from above, through the whole of Arabian Philosophy, and

thence passes into Christian Philosophy. Unfortunately the theory is

nearly correct, as far as this philosophy is itself concerned, for the

‘Active Spirit’, which has created it, is in reality the Neo-Platonic

Aristotle.

Man has always attributed to his God or Gods the highest of his own

possessions. Muslim theologians directly attribute to the divine agency

the moral actions of men. But in the opinion of the philosophers,

Knowing is of more importance than Doing. The latter, having more to do

with the lower world of the senses, may possibly be Man’s own; but his

highest knowledge, the pure Reason, comes from above,—from the Divine

Essence.

It is clear that the doctrine of the Spirit, as it stands in Kindi,

goes back to the ‘Nous’-doctrine of Alexander of Aphrodisias in his

second book “On the Soul”. But Alexander expressly maintained that

according to Aristotle there is a threefold ‘Nous’. Kindi says on the

contrary that he is representing the opinion of Plato and Aristotle. In

this the Neo-Pythagorean and the Neo-Platonic views unite: for in

everything the number ‘Four’ must be pointed out, and Plato and

Aristotle brought into agreement.

6. Let us now sum up: Kindi is a Mutazilite theologian and Neo-Platonic

philosopher with Neo-Pythagorean additions. Socrates, the martyr of

Athenian heathenism, is his ideal: on him, his fate and his teaching he

has composed several works; and he seeks to combine Plato and Aristotle

in Neo-Platonic fashion.

Tradition nevertheless calls him the first who followed Aristotle in

his writings; and assuredly this representation is not altogether

unfounded. In the long list of his works Aristotle takes a prominent

place. He was not satisfied with merely translating him, but he studied

his translated works and endeavoured to improve and explain them. At

all events the Aristotelian Physics, with the commentary of Alexander

of Aphrodisias, had an important influence upon him. Such assertions as

that the world is only potentially unending and not actually so, and

that motion is continuous, and the like, point rather in that

direction. The Natural-Philosophers of that day, as well as the

Faithful Brethren, said for instance, that motion had as little

continuity as number. But farther, Kindi resolutely turned away from

the marvel-mongering philosophy of the time, by declaring Alchemy an

imposture. That which nature alone could produce, he held to be beyond

the power of man. Whoever then gives himself up to alchemistic

experiments, is in his opinion deceiving either himself or others. The

famous physician, Razi, attempted to controvert this view of Kindi’s.

7. The influence of Kindi as a teacher and an author has operated

mainly through his Mathematics, Astrology, Geography and Medicine. His

most faithful and certainly his most notable disciple was Akhmed ibn

Mohammed al-Tayyib al-Sarakhsi († 899), a government-official and

friend of the Caliph Mutadid, to whose negligence or caprice he fell a

victim. He worked at Alchemy and Astrology, strove to gain a knowledge

of the wisdom and might of the Creator from the wonders of creation,

and prosecuted the study of Geography and History. Another disciple of

Kindi’s has become better known,—Abu Mashar († 885), who, however, owes

all his reputation to Astrology. He is said to have become, when 47

years of age, an admirer of Kindi’s,—though up till then he had been a

fanatical opponent of philosophy,—having been attracted to the pursuit

of Astrology, by a superficial study of Mathematics. Whether this be

truth or fiction, such a course of education is at all events

characteristic of that inquisitive grasping at half-understood

knowledge, which peculiarly belongs to the first centuries of Arab

Science.

The school of Kindi went in no way beyond the master. Of its literary

activity hardly any sample has been preserved to us beyond a stray

quotation or two. It is of course possible that in the treatises of the

Faithful Brethren, something of it may have been saved, but this cannot

be determined, in the present state of our knowledge.

2. Farabi.

1. In the tenth century the Logicians or Metaphysicians are

distinguished from the Natural-Philosophers. The former follow a more

rigorous method than the Dialecticians, and treat of other subjects

than those which are dealt with by the Physical school. They have

repudiated Pythagoras, to entrust themselves to the guidance of

Aristotle, of course in Neo-Platonic guise.

We have here to do with two directions of scientific interest. The

Natural-Philosophers are more or less concerned with the plenitude of

the concrete phenomena of Nature, as in Geography and Ethnology. They

investigate in all directions the effects of things, and think the

essential nature of these is only to be discerned in such effect or

working. When they do ascend beyond Nature, Soul and Spirit, to the

Divine Essence, then the definition of it to which they confine

themselves, or which they adopt by preference, is—‘the First Cause’,

or,—‘the wise Creator’, whose goodness and wisdom appear from his

works.

The Logicians proceed in a very different way. The occurrence of the

Particular has only a subordinate value in their eyes,—the value,

merely, of an illustration of its deducibility from the Universal.

While the Physicists start from effects or operations, the Logicians

seek to comprehend things from principles. Everywhere they enquire

after the Idea or Essence of things, up to the highest. For them,—to

make the contrast more intelligible by an example—, God is not, first

of all, ‘the wise Creator’, but first of all ‘the necessarily existing

Being’.

In the order of time the Logicians come after the Physical school, just

as the Mutazilite Dialectic on its part (v. II, 3 §§ 4 and 5) brought

within the scope of its consideration first God’s Working, and then his

Being.

We have already come to recognize Razi as the most important

representative of the philosophical direction taken by the Physicists;

and as for the Logical and Metaphysical efforts,—for which Kindi and

others had prepared the way,—they culminate with Razi’s younger

contemporary Abu Nasr ibn Mohammed ibn Tarkhan ibn Uzlag al-Farabi.

2. We cannot say much with certainty about the course of Farabi’s

outward life and training. He was a quiet man, devoted to a life of

philosophy and contemplation, sheltered by the powerful, and assuming

at last the dress of a Sufi. His father is said to have been a Persian

general, and he himself was born at Wasidj, a small fortified place in

the district of Farab in Turkish Transoxiana. It was in Bagdad, and

partly at the hands of a Christian preceptor Yohanna ibn Hailan, that

he received his education. This embraced both literary and mathematical

subjects, forming the equivalent of the ‘Trivium’ and ‘Quadrivium’ of

mediæval Christendom. One or two of his writings, particularly on

Music, give evidence still of his mathematical training. Legend credits

him with ability to speak in all the languages of the world, seventy in

number. That he understood Turkish and Persian,—an a priori

probability,—is manifest from his works. Arabic he writes clearly, and

with a certain grace, although now and then his fondness for synonyms

and parallel clauses interferes with the precision of philosophical

expression.

The philosophy in which Farabi was initiated sprung from the school of

Merv; and perhaps its members had given greater attention to

metaphysical questions than the men of Harran and Basra with their

marked leaning to Natural Philosophy.

From Bagdad, where he had long lived and worked, he went to Haleb

(Aleppo), in consequence doubtless of political disturbances, and there

he settled at the brilliant court of Saif-addaula; but he must have

spent his closing years not at court but in retirement. He died at

Damascus, while on a journey, in December, 950; and it is reported that

his prince, attired as a Sufi, pronounced over him his funeral oration.

We are told that he was eighty years of age, and it is otherwise

probable that he was a very old man. His contemporary, and partner in

study, Abu Bishr Matta died ten years before him, and his pupil Abu

Zakariya Yakhya ibn Adi in the year 971, at the age of eighty-one.

3. The chronological order of the works of Farabi has not been

determined. Shorter treatises in which he comes into touch with the

Dialecticians and Natural-Philosophers, if these are at all genuine in

the form handed down to us, may have been popular or juvenile

productions of his; but his mature powers were applied to the study of

Aristotle’s writings, for which reason the name given him by the East

was ‘the Second Teacher’, that is, ‘the Second Aristotle’.

Since his day the number and order of the works composed by Aristotle

or at least attributed to him, which have been paraphrased and

commented on after Farabi’s example, remain upon the whole fixed. First

come the eight Logical treatises, viz., the Categories; the

Hermeneutics; the First Analytics; the Second Analytics; the Topics;

the Sophistics; Rhetoric; and the Poetics: It is to these that the

Isagoge of Porphyry is the introduction. Then follow the eight

treatises which deal with Physical subjects, viz., Auscultatio Physica;

De Coelo et Mundo; De Generatione et Corruptione; the Meteorology; the

Psychology; De Sensu et Sensato; the Book of Plants; and the Book of

Animals. Lastly come the Metaphysics, the Ethics, the Politics and so

on.

The so-called “Theology of Aristotle” was still considered by Farabi to

be a genuine work. In Neo-Platonic fashion, and with some attempt at

adaptation to the Muslim faith, he seeks to demonstrate that Plato and

Aristotle harmonize with one another. The need which he experiences is

not for a discriminating criticism, but for a conclusive and

comprehensive view of the world; and the satisfaction of this

need,—which is rather a religious than a scientific one,—induces him to

overlook philosophic differences. Plato and Aristotle must differ from

each other only in method, in phraseology, and in relation to practical

life: their doctrine of wisdom is the same. They are the ‘Imāms’ or

‘highest authorities’ in philosophy; and seeing that they were two,

independent, original minds, the authority which is constituted by

their agreement has more validity in the eyes of Farabi than the faith

of the whole Muslim community, who with blind confidence follow the

guidance of one.

4. Farabi is counted among the physicians, but he seems not to have

been in actual practice. He was entirely devoted to the spiritual

healing art. Purity of Soul he denominated the condition and fruit of

all philosophizing, and he demanded love of truth even though it should

oppose Aristotle. Then the judgment has to be trained by means of

Geometry and Logic for the study of physical and mental science.

Farabi, however, pays but little heed to the separate branches of

study: his powers are concentrated on Logic, Metaphysics, and the

principles of Physics. Philosophy for him is the science of all Being

as such, in the acquisition of which science we come to resemble the

Godhead. It is the one, all-embracing science, which pictures the world

to us as a Universe. Farabi’s charge against the Dialecticians is, that

they employ as a basis for their demonstrations the deliverances of

ordinary consciousness without testing them; and the

Natural-Philosophers he blames for continually occupying themselves

merely with the effect of things, and thus never getting beyond the

contrasts of worldly phenomena by attaining to a unified conception of

the All. He would confront the former by setting Thought on a proper

foundation; and in opposition to the latter he would thoroughly

investigate the subject of the One First Cause of all that exists.

Consequently we shall be taking the best way to do justice to his

historical and dogmatic position, if we endeavour to give some account,

first of his Logic, next of his Metaphysics, and finally of his Physics

and Practical Philosophy.

5. The Logic of Farabi is not a mere analysis of scientific thinking:

it contains in addition many remarks on grammar, and discussions on the

theory of knowledge. While grammar is limited to the language of one

people, Logic, on the other hand, has to regulate the expression in

language of the aggregate intelligence of mankind. From the simplest

elements of speech it must advance to the most complex forms,—from the

word to the sentence, and on to discourse.

Logic falls into two divisions, according as its subjects stand related

to actuality; the first of these comprising the doctrine of Ideas and

Definitions (tasawwur), and the second, the doctrine of Judgments,

Inferences, and Proofs (tasdiq). Ideas,—with which are classed

Definitions, though in a mere loose, outward juxtaposition,—have in

themselves no relation to actuality, that is to say, they are neither

true nor false. Among ‘Ideas’ Farabi recognizes here the simplest

psychological forms, that is, both the representations of individual

objects arising from Sense-Perception, and those ideas which have been

stamped upon the mind from the first, such as the Necessary, the

Actual, the Possible. Such representations and ideas are immediately

certain. A man’s mind may be directed to these, and his soul made

observant of them, but they cannot be demonstrated to him, nor can they

be explained by deriving them from what is known, seeing that they are

already clear in themselves, and that too with the highest degree of

certitude.

By combining representations or ideas, judgments result, and these may

be either true or false. To obtain a foundation for these judgments we

have to go back through the processes of Inference and of Proof to

certain propositions originally conveyed to the understanding,

immediately obvious, and admitting of no farther confirmation. Such

propositions,—the fundamental propositions or Axioms of all

Science,—there must be for Mathematics, Metaphysics, and Ethics.

The doctrine of Proof, by which, starting from what is known and

well-established, we arrive at a knowledge of something formerly

unknown, is, according to Farabi, Logic properly so called.

Acquaintance with the leading Concepts (the Categories), and with their

synthesis in Judgment (Hermeneutics) and in Inference (First Analytics)

furnishes only the introduction thereto. And in the Proof-doctrine the

chief point is to ascertain the Norms or principles of a universally

valid and necessary Science, which Philosophy has to be. Here the Law

of Contradiction is looked upon as the highest of these principles, by

which law the truth or necessity of a proposition, and at the same time

the untruth or impossibility of the contrary, become known in one

single cognitive act. From this point of view the Platonic Dichotomy is

to be preferred, as a scientific method, to the Aristotelian Polytomy.

And Farabi is not content with the formal side of the doctrine of

proof. That doctrine has to be more than a methodology which points out

the right way to the truth: it must itself point out the truth; it must

generate science. It not only deals with judgments as material for the

syllogism, but it enquires also into the truth which they contain, with

reference to the particular sciences concerned. It is not a mere

implement; it is rather a constituent part of philosophy.

As we have seen, the theory of proof terminates in necessary knowledge,

corresponding to necessary existence. But besides this there is the

great province of the Possible, from which we can gain only a probable

knowledge. The different degrees then of probability, or the modes in

which we attain to a knowledge of the Possible, are discussed in the

Topics, and with them are associated Sophistic, Rhetoric and Poetics.

In other connections these last three subjects are mainly concerned

with practical aims, but in Farabi’s hands they are combined with the

Topics into a Dialectic of the Seeming. He proceeds to say that true

science can be built up only on the necessary propositions of the

Second Analytics, but that Probability shades off into the mere phantom

of truth, from the topical or dialectic judgments down to the poetical.

Thus Poetry stands at the very bottom of the scale, being in Farabi’s

opinion a lying and immoral absurdity.

In the addendum to the Isagoge of Porphyry, our philosopher has also

given expression to his views on the question of ‘Universals’. He finds

the Particular not only in things and in sense-perception but also in

thought. In like manner the Universal exists not merely as an

‘accident’ in individual things, but also as a ‘substance’ in mind. The

mind of man abstracts the Universal from things, but it had an

existence of its own before these. Virtually therefore the triple

distinction of the ‘ante rem’, ‘in re’ and ‘post rem’ already occurs in

Farabi.

Does mere ‘being’ also belong to the Universals? Is existence, in

effect, a predicate? This question which caused so much mischief in

philosophy was fully and correctly answered by Farabi. According to

him, existence is a grammatical or logical relation, but not a category

of actuality which makes any assertion about things. The existence of a

thing is nothing but the thing itself.

6. The trend of thought found in the Logic asserts itself also in the

Metaphysics. Instead of the Changeable and the Everlasting, there

emerge the ideas of the Possible and the Necessary.

Everything in fact that exists, is, in Farabi’s view, either a

necessary or a possible thing; there is no third kind of Being. Now

since all which is possible presupposes for its realisation a Cause,

while yet the chain of causes cannot be traced back without end, we see

ourselves compelled to assume that there is a Being, existing of

necessity, uncaused, possessing the highest degree of perfection and an

eternal plenitude of reality, self-sufficing, without any change, who

as absolute Mind and pure goodness and thinking,—being the thinking and

the thought in one nature,—loves the all-transcending goodness and

beauty of that nature, which is his own. This Being cannot be proved to

exist, because he himself is the proof and first cause of all things,

in whom truth and reality coincide. And it is involved in the very idea

of such a Being, that he should be one, and one only, for if there were

two first and absolute Beings, they would have to be partly alike and

partly different,—in which case, however, the simplicity of each would

be destroyed. A Being who is the most perfect of all, must be one

alone.

This first Existence, one alone, and of a verity real, we call God; and

since in him all things are one, without even difference in kind, no

definition of his Being can be supplied. Yet man bestows upon him the

noblest names, expressive of all that is most honoured and esteemed in

life, because in the mystic impulse thereto, words lose their usual

significance, transcending all discrepancy. Some names refer to his

essential nature, others to his relation to the world, without

prejudicing, however, the unity of his essence; but they are all to be

understood metaphorically, and we can interpret them only according to

feeble analogy. Of God, as the most perfect Being, we ought properly to

have also the most complete idea. At least our mathematical notions are

more perfect than our notions of physics, because the former refer to

the more perfect objects. But with the most perfect object of all we

fare as with the most brilliant light: by reason of the weakness of our

eyes we cannot bear it. Thus the imperfections inherent in Matter cling

to our understanding.

7. We are able to see God better in the regular gradation of Beings

which proceed from him than in himself. From him, the One alone, comes

the All, for his knowledge is the highest power: In his cognizance of

himself the world comes into being: The cause of all things is not the

will of an almighty Creator, but the knowledge of the Necessary. From

eternity the Forms or Types of things are in God, and from him

eternally proceeds also his own image, termed ‘the Second All’ or ‘the

first created Spirit’, which moves the outermost celestial Sphere. In

succession to this Spirit, come, one out of the other, the eight

Spirits of the Spheres, all of which are unique in their several kinds

and perfect, and these are the creators of the celestial bodies. These

nine Spirits, called ‘Celestial Angels’, together form the second grade

of Being. In the third grade stands the Reason, active in Humanity,

which is also termed the Holy Spirit and which unites heaven and earth.

The Soul is in the fourth grade. These two, the Reason and the Soul, do

not remain by themselves in their strict original One-ness, but

multiply in accordance with the great number of human beings. Lastly

appear Form and Matter, as Beings of the fifth and sixth orders; and

with them the series of Spiritual existences is closed. The first three

grades, God, the Spirits of the Spheres, and the Active Reason, remain

Spirit per se; but the three which follow,—Soul, Form and Matter,

although incorporeal, yet enter into relation with Body.

The Corporeal, which is held to originate in the imagination of the

Spirit, has also its six grades: Celestial Bodies, Human Bodies, Bodies

of Lower Animals, Bodies of Plants, Minerals, and Elementary Bodies.

The influence of Farabi’s Christian preceptor is probably still to be

seen in these speculations, following as they do the number Three. That

number had the same significance in them that the number Four had with

the Natural-Philosophers. The terminology also bears out this idea.

That, however, is merely external: It is Neo-Platonism that contributes

the contents. Here the Creation, or Emanation of the world, appears as

an eternal, intellectual process. By the first created Spirit thinking

of its Author, the second Sphere-spirit comes into being; while, by the

same Spirit thinking of itself and thus realizing itself, there

proceeds from it the first Body, or the uppermost celestial Sphere. And

so the process goes on in necessary succession, down to the lowest

Sphere, that of the Moon, in entire accordance with the Ptolemaic

Sphere-system,—as it is known to every well-educated person at least

from Dante’s “Commedia”,—and in the Neo-Platonic manner of derivation.

The Spheres together form an unbroken order, for all that exists is a

Unity. The creation and preservation of the world are one and the same.

And not only is the unity of the Divine Being portrayed in the world,

but the Divine righteousness is also expressed in the beautiful order

which there prevails. The logical order of the world is at the same

time a moral order.

8. The sublunary world of this earth is, of course, wholly dependent on

the world of the celestial spheres. Yet the influence from above bears

in the first place, as we know a priori, upon the necessary order of

the whole, although in the second place the individual thing also is

made to happen, but only according to natural reciprocal action, and

therefore by rules which experience teaches us. Astrology, which

attributes everything that is contingent or extraordinary to the stars

and their conjunctions, is combated by Farabi. There is no certain

knowledge of the Contingent; and,—as Aristotle also has taught,—much of

what happens on this earth possesses in a high degree the character of

the Contingent or the Possible. The celestial world, on the other hand,

has another and a more perfect nature, which operates according to

necessary laws. It can bestow upon this earthly world only that which

is good; and therefore it is a complete mistake to maintain that some

stars bring good luck, and others ill luck. The nature of the heavens

is one, and it is uniformly good. The conclusion then at which Farabi

arrives, by these reflections is this: Knowledge, capable of

demonstration, and perfectly certain, is afforded by Mathematical

Astronomy alone; the physical study of the heavens yields a probable

knowledge; but the tenets and vaticinations of Astrology merit an

exceedingly hesitating belief.

Overagainst the simplicity of the celestial world we have the sublunary

kingdom of the four natures,—the kingdom of contrasts and of change.

Even in this realm, in the midst of its plurality, we meet with the

unity of an ascending series, from the Elements up to Man. Farabi is

unable to advance much that is original on this subject. True to his

logical standpoint, he gives himself very little concern about the

Natural Sciences, among which, in reliance upon the original unity of

matter, he seems without any hesitation to have counted Alchemy. We

turn at once to his Doctrine of Man or of the Human Soul, which

presents a measure of interest.

9. The powers or divisions of the Human Soul are, in Farabi’s opinion,

not of co-ordinate rank, but constitute an ascending series. The lower

faculty is Material for the higher; and this again is the Form for the

first, while the highest power of all, viz. Thinking, is non-material,

and is Form for all the Forms which precede. The life of the Soul is

raised from things of sense to thought, by means of the power of

Representation; but in all the faculties there is involved Effort or

Will. Every theory has its obverse side in practice; and Inclination

and Disinclination are inseparable from the perceptions furnished by

the senses. To the representations of these the soul takes up an

attitude of assent or dissent, by affirming or denying. Finally,

Thought passes judgment on Good and Bad, gives to the Will its motives,

and constructs Art and Science. All Perception, Representation or

Thought is attended with a certain effort to reach the necessary

consequence, just as warmth radiates from the substance of fire.

The Soul is that which gives completeness (Entelechia) to the existence

of the body; but that which gives completeness to the existence of the

Soul is the Mind, or the Spirit (ʻaql). The Spirit only is the real

Man.

10. Accordingly the discussion turns mainly on the Mind or Spirit. In

the human Spirit everything earthly is raised to a higher mode of

existence, which is lifted out of the categories of the Corporeal. Now

as a capability or potentiality, Mind or Spirit is present in the Soul

of the Child; and it becomes actual Spirit in the course of its

apprehension of bodily forms in experience by means of the Senses and

the representative faculty. But this transition from possibility to

actuality,—the realisation thus of experience,—is not Man’s own act,

but is brought about by the Superhuman Spirit, which has sprung from

the last Sphere-Spirit, that of the Moon. In this way Man’s knowledge

is represented as being a contribution from above, and not a knowledge

which has been acquired in mental struggle. In the light of the Spirit

which stands above us, our understanding descries the Forms of the

Corporeal; and thereby experience is amplified into rational knowledge.

Experience, in fact, takes in only the Forms which have been abstracted

from the world of Matter. But there are in existence also,—before and

above material things,—Forms and general entities, in the pure Spirits

of the Spheres. Man now receives information from these ‘detached

Forms’: it is only by means of their influence that his actual

experience becomes explicable to him. From God down to the Spirit of

Mankind, the higher Form affects only that which immediately succeeds

it. Every intermediate Form stands in a relation of ‘receptive’

activity to what is above it, and of ‘conferring’ activity to what is

below it. In its relation to the Human Spirit, which is influenced from

above (ʻaql mustafad), the Superhuman Spirit, produced from the last

Sphere-Spirit, is to be called ‘active’ or ‘creative’ (ʻaql faʻʻâl).

Yet it is not continually active, because its effectiveness is

restrained by its material. But God is the completely-real,

eternally-active Spirit.

The Spirit in Man is threefold: according as it is (1) Possible, (2)

Actual, and (3) Influenced from above. Now in the sense of Farabi, this

means—that (1) the spiritual potentiality in Man is, by means of (2)

realizing the knowledge which is gained by experience, (3) led to the

knowledge of the Supersensible, which precedes all experience, and

itself induces the experience.

The grades of Spirit and its knowledge correspond to the grades of

existence. The lower strives wistfully to reach the higher, and the

higher lifts the lower up to its own level. The Spirit which stands

above us, and which has lent to all earthly things their Forms, seeks

to bring these scattered Forms together that they may become one in

love. First of all he collects them in Man. And indeed the possibility

and truth of human knowledge depend on the fact that the same Spirit

who bestowed upon the Corporeal its figure, also gives Idea to Man. The

scattered Forms of the earthly are found again in the Human Spirit, and

thereby it comes to resemble the last of the Celestial Spirits. Unity

with that Celestial Spirit,—and in this an approach to God,—is the aim

and the blessedness of the Spirit of Man.

Now the question whether such a union is possible before Man’s death

is, in Farabi’s opinion, either a doubtful one, or one which should be

answered in the direct negative. The highest thing that can be attained

in this life, is rational knowledge. But separation from the body gives

to the rational soul the complete freedom which belongs to spirit. But

does it then continue to exist as an individual soul? Or is it merely a

Moment of the higher World-Intelligence? On this point Farabi expresses

himself ambiguously, and with a lack of consistency, in his various

writings. Men,—so the expression runs,—disappear in death; one

generation follows another; and like is joined to like, each in its own

class. And forasmuch as rational souls are not bound to space, they

multiply without end, just as thought is added to thought, and power to

power. Every soul reflects on itself and all others that are like to

it; and the more it so reflects, the more intense is its joy (Cf.

infra, § 13).

11. We come now to Farabi’s practical philosophy. In his Ethics and

Politics we are brought into a somewhat closer relation to the life and

belief of the Muslims. One or two general points of view may be brought

forward.

Just as Logic has to give an account of the principles of knowledge, so

Ethics have to deal with the fundamental rules of conduct, although, in

the latter, somewhat more value is attached to practice and experience

than in the theory of knowledge. In the treatment of this subject

Farabi agrees sometimes with Plato, and sometimes with Aristotle; but

occasionally, in a mystic and ascetic fashion, he goes farther than

either of them. In opposition to the Theologians, who recognize, no

doubt, a knowledge gained by Reason, but not rules of conduct taught by

Reason, Farabi frequently affirms with emphasis that Reason decides

whether a thing is good or evil. Why should not that Reason, which has

been imparted to us from above, decide upon conduct, seeing that the

highest virtue certainly consists in knowing? In vigorously accentuated

terms Farabi declares that if one man knew everything that stands in

the writings of Aristotle, but did not act in accordance with his

knowledge, while another man shaped his conduct in accordance with

Aristotle’s teaching, without being acquainted with it, the preference

would have to be assigned to the former. Knowledge takes a higher

position than the moral act; otherwise it could not decide upon the

act.

By its very nature the Soul desires. In so far as it perceives and

represents, it has a will, just like the lower animals. But man alone

possesses freedom of choice, seeing that this rests upon rational

consideration. Pure thought is the sphere of freedom. Thus it is a

freedom which depends upon motives furnished by thinking,—a freedom

which is at the same time necessity, inasmuch as in the last resort it

is determined by the rational nature of God. In this sense Farabi is a

Determinist.

On account of the opposition offered by matter, the freedom of man, as

thus conceived, can only imperfectly vindicate its lordship over the

Sensible. It does not become perfect till the rational soul has been

enfranchised from the bonds of matter and the wrappings of error,—in

the life of the Spirit. But that is the highest blessedness which is

striven after for its own sake, and consequently it is plainly the

Good. Such good the Human Soul is seeking, when it turns to the Spirit

above it, just as the Spirits of the heavens do, when they draw near to

the Highest.

12. Even in the Ethics little regard is had to actual moral conditions;

but in his Politics Farabi withdraws still farther from real life. In

his oriental way of looking at things, the ideal Republic of Plato

merges into ‘the Philosopher as Ruler’. Men, having been brought

together by a natural want, submit themselves to the will of a single

person, in whom the State, be it good or bad, is, so to speak,

embodied. A State therefore is bad, if the head of it is, as regards

the principles of the Good, either ignorant or in error, or quite

depraved. On the other hand the good or excellent State has only one

type, that namely in which the philosopher is ruler. And Farabi endows

his ‘Prince’ with all the virtues of humanity and philosophy: he is

Plato in the mantle of the Prophet Mohammed.

In the description of rulers representative of the ideal Prince,—for

there may be more than one existing together, and Prince and minister

may divide governing-virtue and wisdom between them,—we come nearer the

Muslim political theory of that day. But the expressions are wrapped in

obscurity: the lineage, for example, which is proper for a Prince, and

his duty of taking the lead in the holy war,—are not clearly signified.

All indeed is left floating in philosophic mist.

13. Morality reaches perfection only in a State which at the same time

forms a religious community. Not only does the condition of the State

determine the temporal lot of its citizens, but also their future

destiny. The souls of citizens in an “ignorant” State are devoid of

reason, and return to the elements as sensible Forms, in order to be

united anew with other beings,—men or lower animals. In States which

are “in error”, and in those which are “depraved”, the leader alone is

responsible, and punishment awaits him in the world beyond; but the

souls which have been led into error share the fate of the ignorant. On

the other hand, if the good and ‘knowing’ souls only maintain their

ground, they enter the world of pure Spirit; and the higher the stage

of knowledge to which they have attained in this life, the higher will

their position be after death, in the order of the All, and the more

intense their blessed delight.

In all likelihood expressions of this kind are only the outer wrapping

of a mystico-philosophical belief in the absorption of the Human Spirit

into the World-Spirit and finally into God. For,—as Farabi

teaches,—although the world, deductively considered (i.e. logically

and metaphysically), is something different from God, yet inductively

the present world is regarded by the soul as being identical with the

next, because in everything, even in his Unity, God is himself the All.

14. If we now take a general survey of Farabi’s system, it exhibits

itself as a fairly consistent Spiritualism,—or,—to be more

precise,—Intellectualism. The Corporeal,—that which appeals to the

Senses,—as it originates in the imagination of the Spirit, might be

designated “a confused presentation”. The only true existence is

Spirit, although it assumes various degrees. God alone is entirely

unmixed and pure Spirit, while those Spirits, which eternally proceed

from him, already have in them the element of plurality. The number of

primary Spirits has been determined by the Ptolemaic cosmology, and

corresponds to the celestial hierarchy. The farther any one of them is

removed from the first, so much the less part has it in the Being of

the pure Spirit. From the last World-Spirit Man receives his essential

nature, that is—Reason. There is no gap in all the system; the Universe

is a beautiful and well-ordered whole. The Evil and the Bad are the

necessary consequence of finiteness in individual things; but the Good

which characterizes the Universe is set thereby in bolder relief.

Can this fair order of the Universe, from all eternity emanating from

God, ever be destroyed, or can it even flow back to God? A sustained

streaming-back to the Godhead, there doubtless is. The longing of the

Soul is directed to what is above and advancing knowledge purifies it

and leads it upwards. But how far? Neither philosophers nor prophets

have been able to return a clear answer to this question. And the

wisdom of both of these,—both philosophy and prophecy,—Farabi derives

from the creative World-Spirit above us. Now and again he speaks of

prophecy as if it represented the highest stage of human knowledge and

action. But that cannot be his real view;—at least it is not the

logical consequence of his theoretical philosophy. According to it

everything prophetic,—in dream, vision, revelation and so on,—belongs

to the sphere of the Imagination or Representation, and thus takes an

intermediate position between Sense-Perception and pure Rational

Knowledge. Although, in his Ethics and Politics, he attaches a high

educational importance to religion, it is always regarded as inferior

in absolute worth to knowledge acquired through pure reason.

Farabi lived perpetually in the world of the Intellect. A king in the

mental realm, a beggar in worldly possessions, he felt happy with his

books, and with the birds and flowers of his garden. To his people,—the

Muslim community,—he could be only very little. In his political and

ethical teaching there was no proper place for worldly matters or for

the ‘holy war’. His philosophy did not satisfy any need appertaining to

the senses, while it spoke against the life of imagination belonging

both to the senses and the intellect, as that life gives special

expression to itself in the creations of Art and in religious fancies.

He was lost in the abstractions of pure Spirit. As a pious, holy man,

he was an object of wonder to his contemporaries, and by a few

disciples he was honoured as the personification of wisdom; but by the

genuine scholars of Islam he was always decried as a heretic. There

was, of course, ground enough for this: just as Natural Philosophy

easily led to Naturalism and Atheism, the Monotheism of the Logicians

imperceptibly conducted to Pantheism.

15. Farabi had no great following of disciples: Abu Zakariya Yakhya ibn

Adi, a Jacobite Christian, became known as a translator of Aristotelian

works; but a pupil of Zakariya’s came to be more spoken of, called Abu

Sulaiman Mohammed ibn Tahir ibn Bahram al-Sidjistani, who gathered

about him in Bagdad, in the second half of the tenth century, the

learned men of his time. The conversational discussions which they

conducted, and the philosophical instructions which were imparted by

the master, have been to some extent preserved, and we can clearly see

the outcome of the school. Just as Natural Philosophy drifted into a

secret lore, and the school of Kindi abandoned Philosophy for the

separate branches of Mathematical and Physical Science, so the logical

tendency of Farabi passed into a philosophy of words. Distinctions and

definitions form the subject of these conferences. Individual points in

the history of philosophy and in the several sciences are discussed

also, without any systematic connection; but almost never does any

positive interest in these subjects appear. The Human Soul occupies the

foreground entirely, just as in the case of the Faithful Brethren,

except that these last dealt rather with the marvellous operations of

the Soul, while the Logicians pondered over its rational essence and

its elevation to the Supra-rational. The Sidjistani Society trifled

with words and concepts, instead of with numbers and letters after the

fashion of the Brethren; but the end in both cases was—a mystical

Sufism.

It is therefore no matter of astonishment that in the learned meetings

of Abu Sulaiman, as reported by his pupil Tauhidi († 1009),

Empedocles, Socrates, Plato and others are oftener mentioned than

Aristotle. A very miscellaneous society came together in those

meetings. No question was asked as to the country from which any one

came, or the religion to which he adhered. They lived in the

conviction,—derived from Plato, that every opinion contained a measure

of truth, just as all things shared in a common existence, and all

sciences in an actual knowledge which was one and the same. On that

assumption alone could they have conceived that every one might start

with maintaining that his own opinion was the true one, and that the

science which he cultivated was the science most to be preferred. And

for that very reason there is no conflict between Religion and

Philosophy, however vehement the assertions may be on these two sides.

On the contrary Philosophy confirms the doctrines of Religion, just as

the latter brings the results of Philosophy to perfection. If

Philosophical Knowledge is the essence and end of the Soul of man,

Religious Belief is its life, or the way to that end; and as Reason is

God’s vicegerent on earth, it is impossible for Reason and Revelation

to contradict each other.

It is not worth while to accentuate particular points in these

conversational discussions, the tenor of which we have given. The

appearance of Sidjistani and his circle is important in the history of

culture; but it has no significance as regards the development of

Philosophy in Islam. What was to Farabi the very life of his Spirit,

becomes in this Society a subject merely of clever conversation.

3. Ibn Maskawaih.

1. We have arrived at the point of time when the tenth century is

passing into the eleventh. Farabi’s school has apparently died out; and

Ibn Sina,—destined to awaken into fresh life the philosophy of his

predecessor,—is still a youth. Here however we have to make mention of

a man, more allied, it is true, to Kindi than to Farabi, but who yet

agrees with the latter in essential points, by reason of employing the

same sources with him. He affords an instance also of the fact that the

most sagacious minds of his time were not disposed to follow Farabi

into the region of Logico-Metaphysical speculation.

This man is Abu Ali ibn Maskawaih, physician, philologist and

historian, who was the treasurer and friend of the Sultan Adudaddaula,

and who died full of years in 1030. Amongst other things he has left us

a philosophical system of Ethics which up to this day is valued in the

East. It is a combination of material taken from Plato, Aristotle,

Galen and the Muslim Religious Law, although Aristotle predominates in

it. It commences with a treatise on the Essential Nature of the Soul.

2. The Soul of Man, as Ibn Maskawaih explains, is a simple, incorporeal

substance, conscious of its own existence, knowledge and working. That

it must be of a spiritual nature—follows from the very fact that it

appropriates at one and the same time Forms the most opposed to each

other, for example, the notions of white and black, while a body can

only take up one of the two forms at a time. Farther, it apprehends

both the forms of the Sensible and those of the Spiritual in the same

spiritual manner, for Length is not ‘long’ in the soul, nor does it

become ‘longer’ in the memory. Accordingly the knowledge and endeavour

of the soul extend far beyond its own body: even the entire world of

sense cannot satisfy it. Moreover it possesses an inborn rational

knowledge, which cannot have been bestowed by the Senses, for it is by

means of this knowledge that it determines the True and the False, in

the course of comparing and distinguishing between the objects

presented to it in Sense-Perception,—thus supervising and regulating

the Senses. Finally, it is in Self-Consciousness, or knowing of its own

knowing, that the spiritual unity of the soul is most clearly shewn,—a

unity, in which thinking, that which thinks, and that which is

thought—all coincide.

The human soul is distinguished from the souls of the lower animals

particularly by rational reflection as the principle of its conduct,

directed towards the Good.

3. That by which a Being, possessed of will, attains the end or the

perfection of his nature is, in general terms, ‘good’. A certain

capability, therefore, or disposition, directed to an end is requisite,

in order to be good. But as regards their capability men differ very

essentially. Only a few,—Maskawaih thinks,—are by nature good, and

never become bad, since what is by nature, does not change; while on

the other hand, many are by nature bad, and never become good. Others,

however, who at first are neither good nor bad, are definitely turned

either in the one direction or the other, through upbringing and social

intercourse.

Now the Good is either a general good or a particular good. There is an

absolute Good, which is identical with the highest Being and the

highest knowledge; and all the good together strive to attain to it.

But for every individual person a particular Good presents itself

subjectively under the aspect of Happiness or Pleasure; and this

consists in the full and active manifestation of his own essential

nature,—in the complete realisation of his inmost being.

Speaking generally,—Man is good and happy, if he acts as Man: Virtue is

human excellence. But since humanity is presented as occupying

different levels in different individuals, Happiness or the Good is not

the same for all. And because an individual man, if he were left to his

own resources could not realize all the good things that might

otherwise be obtained, it is necessary that many should live together.

As a consequence of this condition, the first of duties, or the

foundation of all the virtues, is a general love for humankind, without

which no society is possible. It is only along with, and among other

human beings that the individual man attains perfection;—so that Ethics

must be Social Ethics. Friendship therefore is not, as Aristotle would

have it, an expansion of Self-love, but a limitation of it, or a kind

of love of one’s neighbour. And this, like virtue in general, can find

a field of exercise only in society, or in citizenship, and not in the

pious monk’s renunciation of the world. The hermit, who thinks he is

living temperately and righteously, is deceived as to the character of

his actions: they may be religious, but moral they certainly are not;

and therefore the consideration of them does not belong to Ethics.

Besides, in Ibn Maskawaih’s opinion, the Religious Law when rightly

apprehended, pre-eminently accords with an Ethics of Benevolence.

Religion is a moral training for the people. Its prescriptions, with

regard to the worship of God in common and the pilgrimage to Mecca for

instance, have plainly in view the cultivation of the love of one’s

neighbour in the widest acceptation.

In certain special points Ibn Maskawaih has not been successful in

combining harmoniously the ethical doctrines of the Greeks,—which he

incorporates in his Scheme,—either with one another or with the Law of

Islam. That however we pass over; and in any case we ought not only to

praise in general terms his attempt to give a system of Ethics which

should be free from the casuistry of the Moralists and the asceticism

of the Sufis, but also to recognize in the execution of his design the

good sense of a man of wide culture.

4. Ibn Sina.

1. Abu Ali al-Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina (Avicenna) was born at

Efshene in the neighbourhood of Bokhara, in the year 980, of a family

connected with the public service. He received his secular and

religious education at home, where Persian and anti-Muslim traditions

were still full of life and vigour. Then the youth, precocious alike in

body and in mind, studied philosophy and medicine in Bokhara. He was

seventeen years old when he had the good fortune to cure the prince,

Nukh ibn Mansur, and to obtain the privilege of access to his library.

From that time forward he was his own teacher, in scientific research

and in practice, and proved able to turn to account the life and

culture of his time. He kept continually venturing his fortunes in the

political working of the smaller States: Probably he could never have

submitted to a great prince, any more than to a teacher in Science. He

wandered on from court to court, at one time employed in

State-Administration, at another as a teacher and author, until he

became vizir of Shems Addaula in Hamadan. After the death of this

prince he was consigned to prison by his son, for some months. He then

proceeded farther afield, to the court of Ala Addaula in Ispahan. And

at last, having returned to Hamadan, which Ala Addaula had conquered,

he died there in 1037, at the age of 57; and there his grave is pointed

out to this day.

2. The notion that Ibn Sina pushed on beyond Farabi and reached a purer

Aristotelianism, is perhaps the greatest error which has found a

footing in the history of Muslim Philosophy. What did this our man of

the world in reality care for Aristotle? It was not his concern to

commit himself wholly to the spirit of any system. He took what was to

his liking, wherever he found it, but he had a preference for the

shallow paraphrases of Themistius. Thus he became the great philosopher

of accommodation in the East, and the true forerunner of

compendium-writers for the whole world. He knew how to group with skill

his material, collected as it was from every quarter, and to present it

in an intelligible form, although not without sophistry. Every moment

of his life was fully employed. In the daytime he attended to State

affairs or gave instruction to his pupils: the evening was devoted to

the social enjoyments of friendship and love; and many a night found

him engaged in composition, pen in hand, and goblet within reach lest

he should fall asleep. Time and circumstances determined the direction

of this activity. If at the prince’s court he had the requisite

leisure, and a library at hand, he wrote his Canon of Medicine or the

great Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. While travelling, he composed

epitomes and smaller works. In prison he wrote poems and pious

meditations, but always in a pleasing form; in fact his smaller

mystical writings have a poetic charm about them. When commissioned to

do so, he put even Science, Logic and Medicine into verse,—a practice

which came more and more into vogue from the tenth century onwards. Add

to this that he wrote Persian and Arabic at will, and you get the

picture of a most accomplished man. His life was superabundantly rich

both in work and in enjoyment. In geniality, of course he was inferior

to his older compatriot, the poet Firdausi (940–1020), and in

scientific talent to his contemporary Beruni (v. infra § 9), men still

of importance in our eyes. Ibn Sina, however, was the true expression

of his time; and upon this fact have been founded his great influence

and historic position. He did not, like Farabi, withdraw from common

life to become immersed in the commentators of Aristotle, but he

blended in himself Greek science and Oriental wisdom. Enough

commentaries, he thought, had already been written on the ancient

authors: it was now time for men to construct a philosophy of their

own,—in other words, to give a modern form to the ancient doctrines.

3. In Medicine Ibn Sina gives diligent endeavour to produce a

systematic account of that science, but here he proves by no means an

exact logician. He assigns a large place, at least theoretically, to

Experience, and describes in detail the conditions under which alone,

for example, the efficacy of remedies can be ascertained. But the

philosophical principles which are involved in Medicine, must be taken

over in the form of lemmas from Philosophy itself.

Philosophy proper is divided into Logic, Physics and Metaphysics. In

its entirety it embraces the science of all Existence as such, and of

the principles of all the separate sciences, whereby, as far as is

humanly possible, the Soul which is devoted to philosophy, attains the

highest perfection. Now Existence is either spiritual, when it is the

subject of Metaphysics, or corporeal, when it is discussed in Physics,

or intellectual, when it forms the theme of Logic. The subjects of

Physics can neither exist, nor be thought of as existing, without

Matter. The Metaphysical, however is quite devoid of Matter; while the

Logical is an abstraction from the Material. The Logical has a certain

likeness to the Mathematical, in so far as the subjects of Mathematics

may also be abstractions from matter. But yet the Mathematical always

remains capable of being represented and constructed, while on the

other hand the Logical, as such, has its existence only in the

intellect, as, for instance, Identity, Unity and Plurality,

Universality and Particularity, Essentiality and Contingency, and so

on. Consequently Logic is the Science of the Determinate Forms of

Thought.

In the more detailed treatment of his subject Ibn Sina conforms

entirely to Farabi’s Logic. This agreement would perhaps be more

apparent to us, if the logical works of his predecessor were extant in

a more complete form. He frequently lays stress on the defectiveness of

the intellectual constitution in man, which is urgently in need of a

logical rule. Just as the physiognomist infers from the external

features the character of the nature within, so the logician is called

upon to derive from known premises that which is unknown. How easy it

is for the errors of appearance and desire to insinuate themselves into

a process of that kind! A struggle with Sense is required in order that

the life of representation may be elevated to the pure truth of the

Reason, through which any knowledge of a necessary kind is gained. The

divinely-inspired man, but he alone, can dispense with Logic, precisely

as the Bedouin is independent of an Arabic Grammar.

The question of Universals is also treated in a manner similar to that

which is adopted by Farabi. Prior to any plurality, every thing has an

existence in the Mind of God and of the Angels (the Sphere-Spirits);

then as material form it enters upon plurality, to be raised finally in

the intellect of man to the universality of the Idea. Now just as

Aristotle has distinguished between First Substance (Individual) and

Second Substance (cogitable as a Universal), so Ibn Sina similarly

makes a distinction between First and Second Notion or Intention

(Maʻnâ, intentio). The First is referred to the things themselves, the

Second to the disposition of our own thought.

4. In Metaphysics and Physics Ibn Sina is differentiated from Farabi

chiefly through the fact that, by not deriving Matter from God, he

places the Spiritual at a higher elevation above all that is Material,

and in consequence heightens the importance of the Soul as an

intermediary between the Spiritual and the Corporeal.

From the conception of the Possible and the Necessary, the existence of

a Necessary Being plainly follows. According to Ibn Sina we should not

seek to demonstrate the existence of a Creator from his works, but

rather should deduce, from the possible character of all that is, and

all that is thinkable in the world, the existence of a First and

Necessary Being, whose essence and existence are one.

Not only is every sublunary thing of a ‘possible’ nature, but even the

heavens are, in themselves, merely ‘possible’. Their existence becomes

‘necessary’ through another existence which transcends all

‘possibility’ and therefore all plurality and mutability. The

‘absolutely Necessary’ is an unbending Unity, from which nothing

multiplex can proceed. This first One is the God of Ibn Sina, of whom

many attributes may of course be predicated, such as thought &c., but

only in the sense of negation or relation, and in such a way that they

do not affect the Unity of his essence.

Out of the first One accordingly,—One only can proceed, viz.,—the first

World-Spirit. It is in this latter Spirit that Plurality has its

origin. In fact by thinking of its own Cause, it generates a third

Spirit, the governor of the outermost Sphere; when again, it thinks of

itself, a Soul is produced, by means of which the Sphere-Spirit

exercises its influence; and, in the third place, inasmuch as it is in

itself a ‘possible’ existence, there emerges from it a Body, viz., the

outermost Sphere. And so the process goes on: Every Spirit, thus

generated, except of course the last of the series, liberates from

itself a trinity,—Spirit, Soul and Body; for, since the Spirit cannot

move the Body directly, it needs the Soul to bring its effectiveness

into operation. Finally comes the Active Spirit (ʻaql faʻʻâl), closing

the series, and generating no farther pure (separate) Spirit, but

producing and directing the material of what is earthly, as well as

corporeal forms and human souls.

The whole of this process,—which is not to be represented as occurring

in time, takes place in a substratum,—that of Matter. Matter is the

eternal and pure possibility of all that exists, and at the same time

the limitation of the operation of the Spirit. It is the principle of

all individuality.

Now this teaching must certainly have presented a dreadful appearance

to believing Muslims. Mutazilite dialecticians had doubtless asserted

that God can do nothing evil, and nothing irrational; but now

Philosophy was maintaining that, God instead of being able to do all

that is possible is only in a position to effect that which is in its

own nature possible, and that only the first World-Spirit proceeds from

him directly.

As for the rest Ibn Sina makes every endeavour to conform to the

popular belief. Everything exists, he says, through God’s appointment,

both the Good and the Evil, but it is only the former that meets with

his glad approval. Evil is either a non-existent thing, or,—in so far

as it proceeds from God,—an accidental thing. Suppose that He, to avoid

the evils which of necessity cling to the world, had kept it from

coming into being,—that would have been the greatest evil of all. The

world could not be better or more beautiful than it actually is. The

Divine Providence, administered as it is by the Souls of the Heavens,

is found in the world’s fair order. God and the pure Spirits know the

Universal only, and therefore are unable to attend to the Particular;

but the Souls of the celestial Spheres, to whose charge falls the

representation of what is individual, and through whom Spirit acts upon

Body, render it possible to admit a providential care for the

individual thing and the individual person, and to account for

revelation, and so on. Farther, the sudden rise and disappearance of

substances (Creation and Annihilation), in contrast to the constant

movement,—that is, the gradual passing of the Possible into the

Actual,—seem to Ibn Sina to indicate nothing impossible. In general,

there is a predominant want of clearness in his views regarding the

relation of the forms of Existence,—Spirit and Body, Form and Matter,

Substance and Accident. A place at all events is left for Miracle. In

passionate forms of excitement in the Soul, which often generate in

ourselves great heat or cold, we have, according to Ibn Sina, phenomena

analogous to miraculous effects produced by the World-Soul, although it

usually follows the course of Nature. Our philosopher himself, however,

makes a very moderate use of any of these possibilities. Astrology and

Alchemy he combated on quite rational grounds; and yet soon after his

death astrological poems were attributed to him; and in Turkish

Romance-Literature he appears as a magician, of course to represent an

ancient Mystic.

Ibn Sina’s theory of Physics rests entirely on the assumption that a

body can cause nothing. That which causes,—is in every case a Power, a

Form, or a Soul, the Spirit operating through such instrumentality. In

the realm of the Physical there are accordingly countless Powers, the

chief grades of which, from the lower to the higher, are—the Forces of

Nature, the Energies of Plants and Animals, Human Souls and

World-Souls.

5. Farabi was above all things interested in pure Reason: he loved

Thinking for its own sake, Ibn Sina, on the other hand, is concerned

throughout with the Soul. In his Medicine it is man’s Body which he

looks to; and similarly, in his Philosophy his eyes are fixed on man’s

Soul. The very name of his great Philosophical Encyclopaedia is—‘The

Healing’ (that is—of the Soul). His system centres in Psychology.

His theory of human nature is dualistic. Body and Soul have no

essential connection with one another. All bodies are produced, under

the influence of the stars, from the mingling of the Elements; and in

this way the human body also is produced, but from a combination in

which the finest proportion is observed. A spontaneous generation of

the body, just like the extinction and restoration of the human race,

is therefore possible. The Soul, however, is not to be explained from

such mixture of the Elements. It is not the inseparable Form of the

body, but is accidental to it. From the Giver of Forms, that is—from

the Active Spirit over us, every Body receives its own Soul, which is

adapted to it and to it alone. From its very beginning each Soul is an

individual substance, and it developes increasing individuality

throughout its life in the body. It must be admitted that this does not

agree with the contention that Matter is the principle of

individuality. But the Soul is the “infant prodigy” of our philosopher.

He is not a credulous man, and he often cautions us against too ready

an acceptance of mysteries in the life of the Soul; but still he has

the art himself of relating many things about the numerous wonderful

powers and possible influences of the Soul, as it wanders along the

highly intricate pathways of life, and crosses the abysses of Being and

Not-Being.

The speculative faculties are the choicest of all the powers of the

Soul. Acquaintance with the world is conveyed to the rational soul by

the External and Internal Senses. In particular a full account is given

by Ibn Sina of his theory of the Internal Senses, or the

sensuous-spiritual faculties of representation, which have their seat

in the brain.

Medical Philosophers commonly assumed three Internal Senses or stages

of the representative process: 1. Gathering the several

sense-perceptions into one collective image in the fore part of the

brain; 2. Transforming or remodelling this representation of the

general Sense, with the help of representations already existing, thus

constituting apperception proper, in the middle region; 3. Storing up

the ‘apperceived’ representation in the Memory, which was held to

reside in the hinder part of the brain. Ibn Sina, however, carries the

analysis somewhat farther. He distinguishes in the anterior portion of

the brain the Memory of the Sensible,—or the treasure-house of the

collective images,—from the General or Co-ordinating Sense. Farther, he

makes out Apperception,—the function of the middle region of the

brain,—to be in part brought about unconsciously, under the influence

of the sensible and appetent life, as is the case also with the lower

animals, and, on the other hand, to take place in part consciously,

with the co-operation of the Reason. In the first case the

representation preserves its reference to the individual thing,—thus

the sheep knows the hostility of the wolf,—but in the second case, the

representation is extended to the Universal. Then, in the hinder part

of the brain, the Representative Memory, or store-house of the

representations formed by combined Sensuous Impression and Rational

Reflection, follows as a fifth power. In this way five Internal Senses

[18] correspond to the five External Senses, although with quite

another reference than the five Internal Senses of the Faithful

Brethren. The question which is raised—as to whether one should farther

separate Recollection, as a special faculty, from Memory,—remains

unanswered.

6. At the apex of the intellectual powers of the Soul stands the

Reason. There is indeed a Practical Reason also, but in its action we

have been only multiplying ourselves mediately: On the other hand, in

Self-Consciousness, or the pure recognition of our essential nature,

the unity of our Reason is directly exhibited. But instead of keeping

down the lower powers of the Soul, the Reason lifts them up, refining

Sense-Perception, and generalizing Presentation. Reason, which at first

is a mere capacity for Thought, becomes elaborated gradually,—in that

Material which is conveyed to it by the external and internal

senses,—into a finished readiness in Thought. Through exercise the

capability becomes reality. This comes about through the

instrumentality of experience, but under guidance and enlightenment

from above,—from the ‘Giver of the Forms’, who as Active Spirit imparts

the Ideas to the Reason. The Soul of man, however, does not possess any

memory for the pure ideas of Reason, for memory always presupposes a

corporeal substratum. As often then as the Rational Soul comes to know

anything, that knowledge flows to it on each occasion from above; and

thinking Souls do not differ in the range and contents of their

knowledge, but in the readiness with which they put themselves in

communication with the Spirit over us, in order to receive their

knowledge.

The Rational Soul, which rules over that which is under it, and comes

to know the higher by means of the enlightenment given by the

World-Spirit, is then the real Man,—brought into existence, but as

unmixed essence, as individual substance, indestructible, immortal. On

this point the clearness of Ibn Sina’s teaching marks it off from that

of Farabi; and, since his time, the assumption of the individual

immortality of the human Souls, which have come into being, is regarded

in the East as Aristotelian, and the opposite doctrine as Platonic.

Thus a better understanding prevails between his philosophy and the

accepted religion. The human body and the whole world of sense furnish

the Soul with a school for its training. But after the death of the

body, which puts an end to this body for ever, the Soul continues to

exist in a more or less close connection with the World-Spirit. In this

union with the Spirit over us,—which is not to be conceived as a

complete unification,—the blessedness of the good, ‘knowing’ souls

consists. The lot of the others is eternal misery; for just as bodily

defects lead to disease, so punishment is the necessary consequence of

an evil condition of Soul. In the same way too, the rewards of Heaven

are apportioned according to the degree of soundness or rationality

which the Soul has attained in its life on earth. The pure Soul is

comforted amidst the sufferings of Time by its prospect of Eternity.

The highest is of course, reached only by a few; for on the pinnacle of

Truth there is no room for the many; but one presses forward after

another, to reach the source of the knowledge of God, welling forth on

its lonely height.

7. To express his view of the Human Reason, Ibn Sina employs and

explains poetical traditions,—a favourite proceeding in the Persian

literature. First and foremost our interest is awakened by the

allegorical figure of Hai ibn Yaqzan. It represents the ascent of the

Spirit out of the Elements, and through the realms of Nature, of the

Souls, and of the Spirits, up to the throne of the Eternal One. Hai

presents himself to the philosopher in the form of an old man with an

air of youth about him, and offers his services as guide. The wanderer

has been striving to reach a knowledge of Earth and Heaven, by means of

his outer and inner senses. Two ways open out before him, one to the

West, the way of the Material and the Evil, the other to the Rising

Sun, the way of Spiritual and ever-pure Forms; and along that way Hai

now conducts him. Together they reach the well of Divine wisdom, the

fountain of everlasting youth, where beauty is the curtain of beauty,

and light the veil of light,—the Eternal Mystery.

Hai ibn Yaqzan is thus the guide of individual, thinking Souls: he is

the Eternal Spirit who is over mankind, and operates in them.

A similar meaning is found by our philosopher in the frequently

remodelled late-Greek legend of the brothers Salaman and Absal. Salaman

is the World-Man, whose wife (i.e., the World of the Senses) falls in

love with Absal, and contrives by a stratagem to wile him into her

arms. But before the decisive moment, a flash of lightning comes down

from heaven, and reveals to Absal the wantonness of the action which he

had nearly committed, and raises him from the world of sensual

enjoyment to that of pure spiritual contemplation.

In another passage the soul of the philosopher is compared to a bird,

which with great trouble escapes from the snares of the earth,

traversing space in its flight, until the Angel of Death delivers it

from the last of its fetters.

That is Ibn Sina’s Mysticism. His soul has needs, for which his

medicine-chest provides no resource, and which the life of a court

cannot satisfy.