THE COMMENTATORIAL SPIRIT. 209 



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 en- 

 riched 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, TJranus, 15 encouraged by the love of phi- 

 losophy manifested by Cosroes, had translated some of the writings 

 of the Stagirite ; about the same time, Sergius had given some trans- 

 lations in Syriac. In the seventh century, Jacob of Edessa translated 

 into this lano'iia^e the Dialectics, and added Notes to the work. Such 



O o ' 



labors 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 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 exam- 

 ples 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. 17 Avicenna (Ebn Sina) 



De?. iv. 196. 18 Ib. iv. IS* 1T Ib. iv. 203. 



VOL. I H 



