THE COMMENTATORIAL SPIRIT. 295 



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 examples 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 him- 

 self altogether to study and meditation. He em- 

 ployed himself particularly in unfolding the import 

 of Aristotle's treatise On the Soul 17 . Avicenna (Ebn 

 Sina) was at once the Hippocrates and the Aristotle 

 of the Arabians ; and certainly the most extraordi- 

 nary 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 Montpellier, till the end of the seven- 

 teenth century, at which period they fell into an 

 almost complete oblivion. Avicenna is conceived, 



18 Deg. iv.187. 17 Ib. iv. 205. 



