which has the capacity of becoming, or of receiving an individuality. Form is that by which individuality is constituted. And the power by which matter receives or is impressed by Form, is, according to Avicebron, the Will of God, as distinct from his Intelligence. Matter—he avers—receives, or is impressed, according to the faculty of reception with which the will of God has endowed it: the power as manifested, notwithstanding the gorgeousness of the universe, is exceedingly small in comparison with what this sovereign Will may produce. The intelligent reader will not fail to mark the connection of the foregoing doctrine, with the specialties of Avicebron's creed; nor can he require to be reminded that the distinction between what is due to the supreme Will, and what to the supreme Intelligence, continues the ground of separation between two great schools of speculative philosophy, up to the present hour. We have already hinted that this remarkable person had no disciples among the Jews. But though they consigned his philosophy to what they fancied was oblivion, they admired and cherished his religious hymns, giving them a place in the ritual of the synagogue.—J. P. N.
AVICENNA; IBN-SINA, Abou-Ali Al-Hosein Ibn-Abdallah; the most celebrated of Arabian physicians, and the greatest philosopher produced by that race, in the East. He was born at Afschena, in the province of Bokhara, in August, 980 a.d. The tales that have come to us concerning his precocity, and the extent of his acquirements, reach the marvellous. At the age of sixteen he had made himself acquainted with all the sciences, and established the highest reputation as a physician. Having succeeded in curing Prince Nouh ben-Mançour of a serious disease, he became a favourite at the palace, and had the treasures of the magnificent royal library opened to him. None of all the court favour that flowed fast on Avicenna, can have been more welcome to him than this. It enabled him to satiate his thirst for knowledge, and to perfect the studies he had begun. After his twenty-second year, we find him travelling through various districts and cities near the Caspian, settling for a time at Djordan, where he composed his great work—the "Canon of Medicine"—a work that carried his name through Europe as well as Asia, and sustained his reputation for several centuries. Having removed to Hamadan, in consequence apparently of the unsettled condition of those regions, the Prince Schems-Eddaula made him his vizier, and placed him in charge of the army. Unfortunately a suspicion had been gathering over Avicenna—viz., that he was not a sound Mussulman. The troops mutinied, and, but for the efforts of the prince, would have killed him. The storm passed over, and the philosopher returned to court, where he composed the greatest of his works, the "Al-Schefâ." Avicenna loved pleasure quite as well as study; and it is said that at this period of his life, after discoursing eloquently in the evening to a large auditory, he spent the greater part of the night in all sorts of excess. After the death of Schems-Eddaula he was suspected of treason, and imprisoned in a fortress, from which he escaped,—taking refuge with Alâ-Eddaula, prince of Ispahan. Again luxurious court life, excess, and riot. A constitution naturally most robust gave way, and he died at Hamadan in July, 1037, at the age of fifty-seven. We are told that as the dark shadow touched him, Avicenna repented of his joys, and took means to secure that he should die as the Faithful ought. It is amazing that, during a life so disturbed from within as from without, any man could have accomplished what this extraordinary genius seems to have done with apparent ease and unconcern. Of his gigantic works—numbering more than a hundred—any one was sufficient to establish a reputation; nor was any science known in his time which, in some manner, he did not advance. The philosophy of Avicenna was the Peripatetic, although several elements are found in it which Aristotle would have disowned. He certainly inclined towards the pantheism peculiar to the East. Those same problems, afterwards discussed by Averrhoès, appear to have mainly occupied him—viz., the theory of being, and the theory of the soul. His notion regarding the question of finite being was this:—Admitting that the first cause is single and absolute, he attempts to solve the mystery of the multiplex, or of the world, as follows—It is not from God directly that all change or motion comes. The first cause energizes only on a sphere that surrounds all things, and from which inferior spheres draw their activity. God has knowledge only of things that are universal, and not concerning special or accidental occurrences. He is influenced by the Peripatetic view, that in all special things there is an entelechy, or faculty of special action, and that the First cause merely draws that forth. The reflecting student will not find it difficult to discern, that under cover of different language, we have being agitated in our own day the very problem which so puzzled Avicenna. But the "theory of the soul" chiefly arrested him. As a matter of course he adopted, in outline, the doctrine of Aristotle; and like Ibn-Tofaïl and almost every Arabian writer, the end of his inquiry was, how the human soul may best reach union with the supernal "active intellect." He recommends elevation through speculative exercise; but, above all, that one subject desire, and search after moral purity, so that the vessel be pure into which the supernal or active intellect may come! Poor mortal!—We borrow the following quotations from M. Munk (taken from Avicenna's "Metaphysics"):—"As to the rational soul, its true perfection consists in becoming an intellectual world, in which one may find the form of all that exists, the rational order that prevails everywhere, the good that penetrates all. . . . Being in this world and within the body, submerged under bad desires, we are not capable of reaching this lofty enjoyment: we do not indeed seek it, or feel capable of reaching it, unless we gain mastery over these desires and passions. . . . It appears that Man cannot detach himself from this world and its bondage, unless he attaches himself strongly to that higher world, and shapes his desires so that they all draw him towards it. . . . . There are men of nature most pure, whose souls are fortified by their purity and their immovable attachment to intellectual life,—these men receive in every act the aid of the supernal intellect: others have even no need of study to attain that communion: they know, of themselves; they are inspired." One might fancy that doctrines like these would have guaranteed the soundness even of a Mussulman; but they did not avail Avicenna in this direction. The true Semitic spirit speedily gave birth to Algazali, who, on that favourite ground of orthodoxy—the assertion of the powerlessness of reason, and the denial of causality—attacked all philosophy.—Avicenna held stoutly by the personality of the human soul, and its indestructibility apart from the body. Hesitation on this subject was reserved for his western successor, Ibn Roschd. Without injustice to the illustrious Spanish Arab, history must award to his eastern predecessor the merit of having first explained to modern times the nature of the philosophy of the Stagyrite.—J. P. N.
AVIENUS, Rufus Festus, a Roman geographer and poet, was twice proconsul. He left a metrical version of the "Περιηγηςις" of Denys, under the title of "Descriptio Orbis Terræ" and several other geographical poems, an edition of which was published at Venice in 1488.
AVIGADOR, Solomon Ben Abraham, a Jewish philosophical writer of the commencement of the fifteenth century, supposed to have been a son of Abraham Ben Meshullam Avigador.
AVILA, Don Sancho de, a Spanish general, born at Avila in 1523. He was one of Alva's lieutenants in the Low Countries, and, according to the Dutch historians, as notorious for cruelty as his master. The Spanish biographers speak only of his valour and warlike skill. Died in 1583.
AVILA, Gil Gonzalez de, a voluminous Spanish biographer and antiquarian, was born at Avila in 1577. He passed the period of his studies at Rome; returned to Spain at twenty years of age; became deacon in the church of Salamanca; and in 1612 was appointed royal historiographer for the two Castiles. Died in 1658. Of his numerous and useful works, the two following may be noticed: 1. "Teatro de las Grandezas de Madrid, corte de los Reyes Catholicos de Espana," 1623. 2. "Teatro Ecclesiastico de las Iglesias Metropolitanas y Catedrales de los Reynos de las dos Castillas, vidas de sus Arzobispos y Obispos y cosas memorablas de sus Sedes," 1645-55.—J. S., G.
AVILA, Hernando d', a Spanish painter and sculptor, a pupil of Francisco Comonte, who flourished about 1565. He worked for the cathedral of Toledo, and for King Philip II.
AVILA, Juan de, a celebrated Spanish preacher, commonly called "the apostle of Andalusia," was born at Almodovar del Campo in 1500. His missionary labours in the towns and in the wilds of Andalusia were prosecuted with untiring zeal and with singular success, until, at the age of fifty, with a constitution completely worn out, he was obliged to desist. Died in 1569. His "Cartas Espirituales," or spiritual letters, have been translated into most European languages.—J. S., G.
