CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY, MIDDLE AGES 71 



being at an early date translated into Latin and diligently studied in Europe, 

 becoming at the same time the basis for continued philosophical research. 

 Abu Sina, or, as he is called in Europe, with a latinized distortion of his name, 

 AviCENNA, was born at Bokhara in 980, of Persian stock. At that period 

 Persia was divided into a number of major and minor states, ruled over by 

 princes, who in mutual rivalry sought to win honour by exploits of war and 

 peace. There prevailed a high standard of intellectual culture, and the con- 

 ditions of the country have often been compared with those of Italy during 

 the Renaissance. Avicenna indeed bears a great resemblance to personalities 

 living at the time of the Renaissance; strictly speaking, he was a physician, 

 but he was also mathematician, astronomer, philosopher, and poet. Cheq- 

 uered too were his fortunes; at one time he was an all-powerful minister at 

 the court of some vassal prince, at another he was an exile fleeing from his 

 enemies and in danger of his life. He died in 1037, his health shattered by 

 his manifold exertions and his reckless love of pleasure. The most important 

 of his numerous writings is his great Canon of Medicine, which, next to 

 Galen's, remained the chief authority in the sphere of medical science. Its 

 sections dealing generally with natural philosophy, anatomy, and physi- 

 ology are of interest from the point of view of biological history. There is 

 still extant a major work of his on general philosophy. As a thinker Avi- 

 cenna takes Aristotle as his starting-point, but he is also tq. a certain extent 

 influenced by neo-Platonism. His conception of nature is governed by the 

 "purpose" theory of Aristotle and Galen. Entirely based on Galen, too, is 

 his idea of the human anatomy. The Arabs were in fact even more afraid of 

 dissecting human bodies than were the people of antiquity; it was forbidden 

 in the Koran, and with however little prejudice the learned interpreted the 

 sacred book, they dared not in this respect violate both it and public opinion. 

 Avicenna, however, was more independent as a physiologist; here he could 

 take advantage of the progress his contemporaries had made in the fields of 

 physics and chemistry. But actually it was more for his excellence of form — 

 brilliant style and well-arranged grouping of his subject — than for any 

 original ideas that Avicenna won fame in the East and eventually, perhaps 

 to a still higher degree, in the West. 



Far more original as a thinker is the second of the great men of science in 

 the East, Averroes, or Ibn-Rushd, as he was properly called in Arabic. He 

 was born at Cordova in Spain in iiz6, the son of an eminent judge. In his 

 native city, which for several centuries had been the centre of Arabic culture 

 in Spain, he studied philosophy, medicine, and jurisprudence, was for some 

 years afterwards cadi of Seville, and was finally governor of a province. The 

 fanatical religious reaction, however, which gradually spread among the 

 Mohammedans in Spain towards the close of the twelfth century, once suc- 

 ceeded in bringing about his downfall, and, accused of heretical opinions 



