men, the emperor Leo, surnamed the Philosopher, and Photius the patriarch, who exerted themselves to restore the study of literature at Constantinople. We still possess the Collection of Extracts of Photius, which, like that of Stobæus and others, shows the tendency of the age to compilations, abstracts, and epitomes, the extinction of philosophical vitality. 4. Arabian Commentators of Aristotle.-The reader might perhaps have expected, that when the philosophy of the Greeks was carried among a new race of intellects, of a different national character and condition, the chain of this servile tradition would have been broken; that some new thoughts would have started forth; that some new direction, some new impulse, would have been given to the search for truth. It might have been anticipated that we should have had schools among the Arabians which should rival the Peripatetic, Academic and Stoic among the Greeks; that they would preoccupy the ground on which Copernicus and Galileo, Lavoisier and Linnæus, won their fame;—that they would make the next great steps in the progressive sciences. Nothing of this, however, happened. The Arabians cannot claim, in science or philosophy, any really great names; they produced no men and no discoveries which have materially influenced the course and destinies of human knowledge; they tamely adopted the intellectual servitude of the nation which they conquered by their arms; they joined themselves at once to the string of slaves who were dragging the car of Aristotle and Plotinus. Nor, perhaps, on a little further reflection, shall we be surprized at this want of vigour and productive power, in this period of apparent national youth. The Arabians had not been duly prepared rightly to enjoy and use the treasures of which they became possessed. They had, like most uncivilized nations, been passionately fond of their indigenous poetry; their imagination had been awakened, but their rational powers and speculative tendencies were still torpid. They received the Greek philosophy without having passed through those gradations of ardent curiosity and keen research, of obscurity brightening into clearness, of doubt succeeded by the joy of discovery, by which the Greek mind had been enlarged and exercised. Nor had the Arabians ever enjoyed, as the Greeks had, the individual consciousness, the independent volition, the intellectual freedom, arising from the freedom of political institutions. They had not felt the contagious mental activity of a small city; the elation arising from the general sympathy in speculative pursuits diffused through an intelligent and acute audience; in short, they had not had a national education such as fitted the Greeks to be disciples of Plato and Hipparchus. Hence, their new literary wealth rather encumbered and enslaved, than enriched and strengthened them: in their want of taste for intellectual freedom, they were glad to give themselves up to the guidance of Aristotle and other dogmatists. Their military habits had accustomed them to look to a leader; their reverence for the book of their law had prepared them to accept a philosophical Koran also. Thus the Arabians, though they never translated the Greek poetry, translated, and merely translated, the Greek philosophy; they followed the Greek philosophers without deviation, or, at least, without any philosophical deviations. They became for the most part Aristotelians;-studied not only Aristotle, but the commentators of Aristotle; and themselves swelled the vast and unprofitable herd. The philosophical works of Aristotle had, in some measure, made their way in the east, before the growth of the Saracen power. In the sixth century, a Syrian, Uranus, encouraged by the love of philosophy manifested by Cosroes, had translated some of the writings of the Stagirite; about the same time, Sergius had given some translations in Syriac. In the seventh century, Jacob of Edessa translated into this language the Dialectics, and added Notes to the work. Such labours became numerous; and the first Arabic translations of Aristotle were formed upon these Persian or Syriac texts. In this succession of transfusions, some mistakes must inevitably have been introduced. The Arabian interpreters of Aristotle, like a large portion of the Alexandrian ones, gave to the Deg. iv. 196. 15 philosopher a tinge of opinions borrowed from another source, of which I shall have to speak under the head of Mysticism. But they are, for the most part, sufficiently strong examples of the peculiar spirit of commentation, to make it fitting to notice them here. At the head of them stands 16 Alkindi, who appears to have lived at the court of Almamon, and who wrote commentaries on the Organon of Aristotle. But Alfarabi was the glory of the school of Bagdad; his knowledge included mathematics, astronomy, medicine and philosophy. Born in an elevated rank, and possessed of a rich patrimony, he led an austere life, and devoted himself altogether to study and meditation. He employed himself particularly in unfolding the import of Aristotle's treatise On the Soul". Avicenna (Ebn Sina) was at once the Hippocrates and the Aristotle of the Arabians; and certainly the most extraordinary man that the nation produced. In the course of an unfortunate and stormy life, occupied by politics and by pleasures, he produced works which were long revered as a sort of code of science. In particular, his writings on medicine, though they contain little besides a compilation of Hippocrates and Galen, took the place of both, even in the universities of Europe; and were studied as models at Paris and Montpellier, till the end of the seventeenth century, at which period they fell into an almost complete oblivion. Avicenna is conceived, by some modern writers 18, to have shown some power of original thinking in his representations of the Aristotelian Logic and Metaphysics. Averroes (Ebn Roshd) of Cordova, was the most illustrious of the Spanish Aristotelians, and became the guide of the schoolmen", being placed by them on a level with Aristotle himself, or above him. He translated Aristotle from the first Syriac version, not being able to read the Greek text. He aspired to, and retained for centuries, the title of the Commentator; and he deserves this title by the servility with which he maintains that Aristotle 20 carried the sciences to the highest possible degree, measured their whole extent, and fixed their ultimate and permanent boundaries; although his works are conceived to exhibit a trace of the New Platonism. Some of his writings are directed against an Arabian skeptic, of the name of Algazel, whom we have already noticed. When the schoolmen had adopted the supremacy of Aristotle to the extent in which Averroes maintained it, their philosphy went further than a system of mere commentation, and became a system of dogmatism; we must, therefore, in another chapter, say a few words more of the Aristotelians in this point of view, before we proceed to the revival of science; but we must previously consider some other features in the character of the Stationary Period. 18 20 Deg. iv. 206. 19 Ib. iv. 247. Averroes died A. D. 1206. |