SCOT TRANSLATES AVERROES 109 



posed a course of moral discipline as the best way 

 of attaining the ittisal : the same ascetic practice 

 which Ibn Tofail so remarkably illustrated and com- 

 mended in his mystical romance Haij Ihn Yokhdan. 

 Gazzali on the other hand, who was the sceptic of 

 these schools, boldly declared that the ittisal was 

 only to be reached by an intellectual and spiritual 

 confusion attained in the zikr, or whirling dance of 

 the Dervishes. It was left then for Averroes to 

 vindicate once more the validity of human reason, 

 and this he did by proclaiming that science, rightly 

 understood, was the true way of entering into in- 

 tellectual communion with the Deity. All, however, 

 agreed in teaching that the soul of man was but 

 an individual and temporary manifestation of the 

 Divine, from which it had proceeded, and into 

 which it would again be absorbed. 



It is plain that the way to this consummation 

 proposed by Averroes had much in common with 

 the ancient theories of the Alexandrian Gnosis. 

 The Albigenses and other sects of the time, 

 especially that called the Brotherhood of the Holy 

 Ghost, had already done much to familiarise the 

 West with these essentially Eastern speculations. 

 A taste for such flights of the mind had been 

 formed, and, as soon as it became known that a 

 new teacher had arisen to advocate a theory of this 

 kind among the Moors, Christianity too was alive 

 with curiosity to know what the doctrine of Averroes 

 might be. 



In these circumstances the anathema of the 

 Church proved powerless to restrain so strong an 

 impulse of the human spirit. The Council of Paris 

 in 1209 had sounded the first note of warning and 



