THE PATH OF EVOLUTION 



The names of Al Kendi, Al Farabi, Avicenna, 

 Avempace, became well known to all the scholastics 

 of Europe, while Averrhoes (Ibn Koschd.,b. 1126) 

 was recognized as the most learned among the Mo- 

 hammedans, and the profoundest of all commentators 

 on the works of Aristotle. His medical knowledge 

 was equally valued. As happens too often to original 

 thinkers, he suffered much from the Orthodox be- 

 lievers; the Mussulman authorities accused him of 

 holding opinions that were not orthodox, and of 

 preaching philosophy that was detrimental to Mo- 

 hammedanism. He was insulted in Cordova, his 

 native town, and obliged to live in the suburbs. Later 

 in life he was taken again into favor by the Caliph 

 Almansur and called to the court at Morocco, where 

 he soon afterwards died, aged seventy-two years. His 

 philosophy, like that of Avicenna, was partly neo- 

 platonic. He believed in the intermediate spheres 

 and in the two intellects the one active, the other 

 passive the hylic. The active one is an emanation of 

 the Universal Intellect; the passive, of the recep- 

 tive intellect. By the conjunction finally of the two, 

 all that is personal in man, the receptive as well as 

 the active intellect, will efface itself by uniting with 

 God, the only veritable Being who is of an absolute 

 unity. Man obtains from this conjunction of intel- 

 lects nothing beyond this life. The general ideas 



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