d burned; and the son of Almansur condemned a certain Ibn-Habib to
death for the crime of philosophizing.

Avempace.

Arabian speculation in Spain was heralded by Avicebron or Ibn Gabirol
(q.v.), a Jewish philosopher (1021-1058). About a generation later the
rank of Moslem thinkers was introduced by Abu-Bakr Muhammad ibn Yahya,
surnamed Ibn-Bajja, and known to the Latin world as Avempace. He was
born at Saragossa, and died comparatively young at Fez in 1138. Besides
commenting on various physical treatises of Aristotle's, he wrote some
philosophical essays, notably one on the _Republic or Regime of the
Solitary_, understanding by that the organized system of rules, by
obedience to which the individual may rise from the mere life of the
senses to the perception of pure intelligible principles and may
participate in the divine thought which sustains the world. These rules
for the individual are but the image or reflex of the political
organization of the perfect or ideal state; and the man who strives to
lead this life is called the _solitary_, not because he withdraws from
society, but because, while in it, he guides himself by reference to a
higher state, an ideal society. Avempace does not develop at any length
this curious Platonic idea of the perfect state. His object is to
discover the highest end of human life, and with this view he classifies
the various activities of the human soul, rejects such as are material
or animal, and then analyses the various spiritual forms to which the
activities may be directed. He points out the graduated scale of such
forms, through which the soul may rise, and shows that none are final or
complete in themselves, except the pure intelligible forms, the ideas of
ideas. These the intellect can grasp, and in so doing it becomes what he
calls _intellectus acquisitus_, and is in a measure divine. This
self-consciousness of pure reason is the highest object of human
activity, and is to be attained by the speculative method. The intellect
has in itself power to know ultimate truth and intelligence, and does
not require a mystical illumination as Ghazali taught. Avempace's
principles, it is clear, lead directly to the Averroistic doctrine of
the unity of intellect, but the obscurity and incompleteness of the
Regime do not permit us to judge how far he anticipated the later
thinker. (See Munk, _Melanges de phil. juive et arabe_, pp. 383-410.)

The same theme was developed by Ibn.-Tufai