href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@16831@[email protected]#Footnote_13_13" class="fnanchor pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">[13] writ fully and satisfactorily about it. Because those Scholars which were bred in Spain, before the Knowledge of Logick and Philosophy was broach'd amongst them, spent their whole Lives in Mathematicks, in which it must be allow'd, they made a great Progress, but went no farther. After them came a Generation of Men, who apply'd themselves more to the Art of Reasoning, in which they excell'd their Predecessors, yet not so as to attain to true Perfection. So that one of them said,

T'is hard the kinds of Knowledge are but two,
The One erroneous, the Other true.
The former profits nothing when 'tis gain'd,
The other's difficult to be attain'd.

After these came others, who still advanc'd further, and made nearer approaches to the Truth; among whom there was one that had a sharper Wit, or truer notions of things than Avenpace, but he was too much taken up with Worldly Business, and Died before he had time to open the Treasury of his Knowledge, so that most of those pieces of his which are extant, are imperfect; particularly his Book about the Soul) and his Tedbíro 'lmotawahhid, i.e. How a Man ought to manage himself that leads a Solitary Life So are his Logicks and Physicks. Those Pieces of his which are compleat, are only short Tracts and some occasional Letters. Nay, in his Epistle concerning the UNION, he himself confesses that he had wrote nothing compleat, where he says, That it would require a great deal of trouble and pains to express that clearly which he had undertaken to prove; and, that the method which he had made use of in explaining himself, was not in many places so exact as it might have been; and, that he design'd, if he had time, to alter it. So much for Avenpace, I for my part never saw him, and as for his Contemporaries, they were far inferiour to him, nor did I ever see any of their Works. Those who are now alive, are, either such as are still advancing forwards, or else such as have left off, without attaining to perfection; if there are any other, I know nothing of them.

As to those Works of Alpharabius which are extant, they are most of them Logick. There are a great many things very dubious in his Philosophical Works; for in his Méllatolphadélah, i.e. The most excellent Sect, he asserts expressly, that the Souls of Wicked Men shall suffer everlasting Punishment; and yet says as positively in his Politicks that they shall be dissolv'd and annihilated, and that the Souls of the Perfect shall remain for ever. And then in his Ethicks, speaking concerning the Happiness of Man, he says, that it is only in this Life, and then adds, that whatsoever People talk of besides, is meer Whimsy and old Wives Fables. A principle, which if believ'd would make all Men despair of the Mercy of God, and puts the Good and Evil both upon the same Level, in that it makes annihilation the common end to them both. This is an Error not to be pardon'd by any means, or made amends for. Besides all this, he had a mean Opinion of the Gift of Prophecy, and said that in his Judgment it did belong to the faculty of Imagination, and that he prefer'd Philosophy before it; with a great many other things of the like nature, not necessary to be mention'd here.

As for the Books of Aristotle, Avicenna's Exposition of them in his Alshepha [i.e. Health] supplies their Room, for he trod in the same steps and was of the same Sect. In the beginning of that Book, says, that the Truth was in his opinion different from what he had there deliver'd, that he had written that Book according to the Philosophy of the Peripateticks; but those that would know the Truth clearly, and without Obscurity, he refers to his Book, Of the Eastern Philosophy. Now he that takes the pains to compare his Alshepha with what Aristotle has written, will find they agree in most things, tho' in the Alshepha there are a great many things which are not extant in any of those pieces which we have of Aristotle. But if the Reader, take the literal Sense only, either of the Alshepha or Aristotle, with, out penetrating into the hidden Sense, he will never attain to perfection, as Avicenna himself observes in the Alshepha.

As for Algazâli[14], he often contradicts himself, denying in one place what he affirm'd in another. He taxes the Philosophers with Heresy[15] in his Book which he calls Altehaphol, i.e. Destruction, because they deny the Resurrection of the Body, and hold that Rewards and Punishments in a Future State belong to the Soul only. Then in the beginning of his Almizân, i.e. The Balance, he affirms positively, that this is the Doctrine of the Suphians[16], and that he was convinc'd of the truth of it, after a great deal of Study and Search. There are a great many such Contradictions as these interspers'd in his Works; which he himself begs Pardon for in the end of his Mizân Alamal [The Ballance of Mens Actions]; where he says, that there are Three sorts of Opinions; 1. Such as are common to the Vulgar, and agreeable to their Notions of things. 2. Such as we commonly make use of in answering Questions propos'd to us. 3. Such private as a Man has to himself, which none understand but those who think just as he does. And then he adds, that tho' there were no more in what he had written than only this, viz. That it made a Man doubt of those things which he had imbib'd at first, and help'd him to remove the prejudices of Education, that even that were sufficient; because, he that never doubts will never weigh things aright, and he that does not do that will never see, hut remain in Blindness and Confusion.

Believe your Eyes, but still suspect your Ears,
You'll need no Star-light[17], when the day appears.

This is the account of his way of Philosophizing, the greatest part of which is enigmatical and full of obscurity, and for that reason of no use to any but such as thoroughly perceive and understand the matter before, and then afterwards hear it from him again, or at least such as are of an excellent Capacity, and can apprehend a thing from the least intimation. The same Author says in his Aljawâhir [i.e. The Jewels] that he had Books not fit to be communicated, but to such only as were qualified to read them, and that in them he had laid down the Naked Truth; but none of them ever came into Spain that we know of: we have indeed had Books which some have imagin'd to be those incommunicable ones he speaks of, but 'tis a mistake, for those are Almaâreph Alakliyah [Intellectual notices] and the Alnaphchi waltéswiyal [Inflation and Æquation] and besides these, a Collection of several Questions. But as for these, tho' there are some hints in them, yet they contain nothing of particular