Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/447

THE SPANISH ARABS. SOS from versions of the Greek philosophers ; but, as chapter their previous discipline had not prepared them for its reception, they were oppressed rather than stim- ulated by the weight of the inheritance. They possessed an indefinite power of accumulation, but they rarely ascended to general principles, or struck out new and important truths ; at least, this is cer- tain in regard to their metaphysical labors. Hence Aristotle, who taught them to arrange Ayerroes. what they had already acquired, rather than to ad- vance to new discoveries, became the god of their idolatry. They piled commentary on commentary, and, in their blind admiration of his system, may be almost said to have been more of Peripatetics than the Stagirite himself. The Cordovan Averroes was the most eminent of his Arabian commentators, and undoubtedly contributed more than any other individual to establish the authority of Aristotie over the reason of mankind for so many ages. Yet his various illustrations have served, in the opinion of European critics, to darken rather than dissipate the ambiguities of his original, and have even led to the confident assertion that he was wholly unac- quainted with the Greek language. ^° 40 Consult the sensible, though text. (Nic. Antonio, Bibliotheca perhaps severe, remarks of Dege- Vetus, torn. ii. p. 394.) Averroes rando on Arabian science. (Hist, translated some of the philosoph- delaPhilosophie, torn. iv. cap. 24.) ical w^orks of Aristotle from the — The reader may also peruse Greek into Arabic ; a Latin ver- with advantage a disquisition on sion of which translation was after- Arabian metaphysics in Turner's wards made. Though D'Herbelot History of England, (vol. iv. pp. is mistaken (Bib. Orientale, art. 405-449. — Brucker, Hist. Phi- Roschd,) in saying that Averroes losophiae, tom. iii. p. 105.) — Lu- was the first, who translated Ar- dovicus Vives seems to have been istotle into Arabic ; as this had the author of the imputation in the been done two centuries before, at