210 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



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 Montpelier, 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 Lave shown some power of 

 original thinking in his representations of the Aristotelian Logic and 

 Metaphysics. Averroes (Ebn Roshd) of Cordova, was the most illus- 

 trious of the Spanish Aristotelians, and became the guide of the school- 

 men, 19 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 servil- 

 ity 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 philosophy went further 

 than a system of mere commentation, and became a system of dogma- 

 tism ; 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 Deg. iv. 206. " lb. iv. 247. Averroes died a. d. 1206. ™ lb. iv. 248. 



