and the breaking of ground in new fields were under a ban. Subtilty of thought and luxury of life took their place. Above all, and naturally, this applied to philosophy. And so it comes that the first philosophic name in the Muslim West is that of Abu Bakr ibn Bajja, for mediaeval Europe Avenpace, who died comparatively young in 533. For him, as for all, and still more in the West than in the East, the problem of the philosopher was how to gain and maintain a tenable position in a world composed mostly of the philosophically ignorant and the religiously fanatical. This problem had two sides, internal and external. The inner and the nobler one was how such a mind could in its loneliness rise to its highest level and purify itself to the point of knowing things as they really are and so reach that eternal life in which the individual spirit loses itself in the Active Intellect (íïõò, ðïéçôéêïò, al-aql ad fa"al) which is above all and behind all. The other, and baser, was how to so present his views and adapt his life that the life and the views might be possible in a Muslim community.

Ibn Bajja was a close disciple of al-Farabi, who is to be regarded as the spiritual father of the later Arabic philosophy; Ibn Sina practically falls out. In logic, physics, and metaphysics he followed al-Farabi closely. But we can see how the times have moved and the philosophies with them. The essential differences have appeared and Ibn Bajja can no longer, with a good conscience, appear as a pious Muslim. The Sufi strain also is much weaker. The greatest joy and the closest truth are to be found in

thought, and not in the sensuous ecstasies of the mystic. The intellect is the highest element in man's being, but is only immortal as it joins itself to the one Active Intellect, which is all that is left of God. Here we have the beginning of the doctrine which, later, under the name of Averroism and pampsychism ran like wild fire through the schools of Europe. Further, only by the constant exercise of its own functions can the intellect of man be thus raised. He must live rationally at all points; be able to give a reason for every action. This may compel him to live in solitude; the world is so irrational and will not suffer reason. Or some of the disciples of reason may draw together and form a community where they may live the calm life of nature and of the pursuit of knowledge and self-development. So they will be at one with nature and the eternal, and far removed from the frenzied life of the multitude with its lower aims and conceptions. It is easy to see how the iron of a fight against overwhelming odds had entered this soul. Only the friendship of some of the Murabit princes saved him; but he died in the end, says a story, by poison.

With the next names we find ourselves at a Muwahhid court, and there the atmosphere has changed. It is evident that, whatever might be the temper of the people, the chiefs of the Muwahhids viewed philosophy with no disfavor. Their problem, as in the case of the Fatimids, seems rather to have been how much the people might be taught with safety. Their solution of the problem—here we proceed on conjecture, but the basis is tolerably sound—was that the bulk