A V EM PACE. 



77 



theory of the origin of life to their wide survey of 

 Nature. 



We take from Giittler the following passages re- 

 garding the Spanish philosophers : — 



" The Arabic philosophers in Spain threw into a stronger light 

 the natural connection between the inorganic and the organic 

 world. In Avempace's (Ibn-Badja) treatise there are said to 

 exist between men, animals, plants, and minerals, strong relations 

 which bind them into a single and united whole. Through 

 various grades of development, the human soul rises from the 

 level of the instincts which it shares with animals to the ' acquired 

 intellect,' wherein it frees itself more and more from the material 

 and the potential. The ' acquired intellect ' is only an elimination 

 of the ' active intellect,' or the Godhead, and thereby it is pos- 

 sible to identify in the last stage of recognition the subject with 

 the object, the thought with the existence." 



Avempace, as he was known in Europe, died 

 in 1 1 38. He was succeeded by Abubacer (Ibn- 

 Tophail), who died in 1185. 



Abubacer was also a poet, and he handled an 

 analogous theme in an Oriental romance upon the 

 birth of the ' Nature-man ' : — 



" There happens to be under the equator an island, where Man 

 comes into the world without father or mother ; by spontaneous 

 generation he arises, directly in the form of a boy, from the earth, 

 while the spirit, which, like the sunshine, emanated from God, 

 imites with the body, growing out of a soft, unformed mass. 

 Without any intelligent surroundings, and without education, this 

 ' Nature-man,' through simple observation of the outer world, and 

 through the combination of various appearances, rises to the 

 knowledge of the world and of the Godhead. First he perceives 

 the individuals, and then he recognizes the various species as 



