A V I C E N N A. 



107 



Avicenna. 



Ajigwtului AUGUSTULUS, the last of the Roman empe- 

 rors i;i the west. See Gibbon's Hist. chap. 36. 

 vol. vi. p. 186. (j) 



AUGUSTUS. See Octavius. 

 AVICENNA, or Ibn-Sina, an Arabian physician 

 and philosopher, was born at Bochara, about the 

 year 978. He has been celebrated for the precocity 

 of his talents. When he was scarcely ten, he is said 

 to have made great proficiency in polite literature, 

 and to have been master of the Alkoran. Abu-Ab- 

 dallah, a famous lecturer in philosophy, undertook to 

 instruct him in the art of logic ; but the pupil was 

 soon convinced of the deficiences of his teacher, and 

 declined receiving any farther assistance from him. 

 With an ardour which no disappointment could 

 quench, and with a constancy of application which 

 never yielded to fatigue or difficulty, he successively 

 studied mathematics, philosophy, and medicine ; and, 

 before he was seventeen years of age, no person could 

 be found in his native city who was capable of giving 

 him farther instruction in any of these branches of 

 knowledge. In the school of Bagdad, where he after- 

 wards studied for some time, he was regarded as a pro- 

 digy of learning. He scarcely allowed himself leisure 

 for sleep or nourishment, and, if we could credit the 

 marvellous tales of his biographers, his mind was per- 

 petually awake. To the difficulties which absolute- 

 ly baffled his judgment during the day, he persuaded 

 himself that he found a ready solution in his dreams. 

 This he piously ascribed to celestial illumination 

 granted in answer to his prayers. 



There is more of the romantic than of the credible 

 in the life of Avicenna. With these hyperbolical ac- 

 counts of h:s almost supernatural capacity, we are at 

 a loss to reconcile the extreme difficulty which he 

 found in comprehending the metaphysics of Aristo- 

 tle. It is said, that after the astonishing progress, 

 at which we have only hinted, he read over that work 

 not less than forty times without understanding a 

 word of it. We are apt to suspect, that the perspi- 

 cacity of the youthful philosopher had either been 

 prematurely dimmed, or that the boasted sciences 

 which he had already mastered were not very pro- 

 found, if they did not enable him to divine any mean- 

 ing in the pages of Aristotle. One would suppose 

 he had been under the influence of enchantment ; for,, 

 it seems an Arabian manuscript, which accidentally 

 fell into his hands, dissipated the charm in an instant. 

 In a transport of gratitude he flew to the mosque, 

 and offered up fervent thanksgivings to heaven for 

 dispelling his darkness. From this moment he was 

 consulted as an oracle, to whose sage decisions the 

 learned, the venerable, and the aged, yielded with 

 implicit deference, as if he had been possessed of the 

 gift of infallibility. We speak of him while only a 

 youth of eighteen. 



His celebrity, as a man of science, was equalled by 

 kis fame as a physician. But we forbear to recite 

 the strange adventures which, we are told, were oc- 

 casioned by the eagerness with which he was courted 

 by different sovereigns. We believe the accounts to 

 which we allude are almost entirely fabulous ; and 

 we are convinced that our readers will not expect us 

 to repeat all the legendary tales which ignorance aid 

 credulity have attempted to impose on posterity. It 



is pretty well ascertained, that the last years of this Avicenna. 

 applauded philosopher were embittered by misfor- 

 tunes, the fruit of his own vices and follies ; and that 

 his days were shortened by the excesses of criminal 

 pleasure. He died about the year 1036, in the fifty- 

 eighth year of his age. 



This man was an incongruous compound of volup- 

 tuousness and fanaticism. Devotion and sensualitv 

 occupied him by turns. His studious habits, and his 

 attention to the affairs of state, when he acted in 

 the capacity of grand vizier, accord ill with the ac- 

 counts which have been preserved of his libertinism. 

 His panegyrists, however, have spoken of him in a 

 strain of admiration, which would almost persuade us 

 that they are painting an ideal character. He wrote 

 with great rapidity and ease ; and few authors have 

 written more. Till the time of Averroes, his books 

 were held in the highest estimation. He wrote a 

 great number of treatises on morals, theology, ma- 

 thematics, astronomy, philology, metaphysics, logic, 

 natural philosophy, natural history, and medicine : 

 And, when he was only twenty-one years of age, he 

 planned a comprehensive view of all the sciences, 

 which, without any assistance, he soon accomplished, 

 though it extended to twenty volumes. This work, 

 which he named The Utility of Utilities, professed 

 to be a complete Encyclopaedia of human knowledge. 

 There are some who say, that Avicenna was a mere 

 plagiarist. So far as we have the means of judging, 

 we do not hesitate to pronounce him a careless and 

 hasty compiler, without taste, or judgment, or dis- 

 cernment ; and yet we have met with some compara- 

 tively modern authors, who speak of him as a most 

 luminous, methodical, and profound writer, who never 

 introduces a subject without throwing new light on 

 it, and who is so remarkable for solidity and preci- 

 sion, that he can never be charged either with t09 

 great diffuseness, or too great condensation. 



The scholastic divines were great admirers of Avi- 

 cenna, partly, we believe, because he pretended the 

 most devoted attachment to Aristotle, and partly in 

 consequence of his having professed sentiments differ- 

 ing less than any of the other Arabians from the 

 Christian faith. On some points, however, his hete- 

 rodoxy is enormous : He rejects the doctrine of grace 

 as altogether superfluous ; he admits the eternity of 

 motion ; he denies that the world could have been 

 made without pre-existing matter ; he asserts, that 

 nothing which is subject to change can proceed 

 from God ; he opposes the doctrine of a particular 

 providence, meaning by this term the knowledge 

 of individual objects ; he maintains that the visible 

 heavens are animated ; he ascribes to angels the fa- 

 culty of propagating celestial souls ; and assumes it 

 as an indisputable truth, that angelical intelligences 

 cannot form any conception of evil. He has been 

 celebrated as an adept in the mysteries of alchemy 

 and the other occult sciences; and we believe that 

 he was as much skilled in these chimerical 'doctrines 

 as in any of the substantial branches of knowledge. 

 Upon the whole, we regard him as a weak visionary, 

 who has contributed to retard the progress of the 

 human mind. See Hottinger. Bib. Orient. ; Baito- 

 Joec. Bib. B(M>. ; Leo Afr. De Vir. illuslr. Arab. ; 

 Mercklin. De Script. Med. (a) 



