But now, how does the individual man get to this stage of knowledge and blessed existence? Through action directed by reason, and the free cultivation of his intellectual powers. Action directed by reason is free action, that is, action in which there is a consciousness of purpose. If one, for instance, breaks a stone to pieces, because he has stumbled against it, he is behaving without purpose, like a child or a lower animal; but if he does this in order that others may not stumble against the stone, his action must be called manlike, and directed by reason.
In order to be able to live as a man should, and to act in a rational way, the individual man, must as far as circumstances permit, withdraw from society. The name borne by the Ethics of Ibn Baddja is “Guidance to the Solitary”. It demands self-culture. Generally, however, one may avail himself of the advantages attending social life in man, without including in the bargain its disadvantages. The wise may associate themselves in larger or smaller unions; such indeed is their duty, if they light upon one another; and then they form a State within the State. Naturally they endeavour to live in such a manner that neither physician nor judge is necessary among them. They grow up like plants in the open air, and do not stand in need of the gardener’s skill. They keep at a distance from the lower enjoyments and sentiments of the multitude. They are strangers to the movements of worldly society. And as they are friends among themselves, this life of theirs is [[181]]wholly determined by Love. Then too as friends of God, who is the Truth, they find repose in union with the superhuman Spirit of Knowledge.
3. Ibn Tofail.
1. The sovereignty over Western Islam remained with the Berbers, but the Almohads speedily took the place of the Almoravids. Mohammed ibn Tumart, the founder of the new dynasty, had, from the year 1121, come forward as Mahdi. Under his successors Abu Yaaqub Yusuf (1163–1184) and Abu Yusuf Yaaqub (1184–1198), their sovereignty, which was centred in Marocco, reached its culminating point.
The Almohads brought with them a startling novelty in theology: The system of Ashari and Gazali, which till then had been branded as heretical, was adopted in the West. That meant an infusion of intellectualism into the teaching of the Faith,—a proceeding which could not be altogether satisfactory either to the adherents of the old Faith or to freethinkers, but which may have incited many to farther philosophizing. Hitherto an attitude of repudiation had been maintained towards all reasoning in matters of faith; and, even later, many politicians and philosophers were of opinion that the faith of the multitude should not be violently disturbed, nor elevated to knowledge, but that the provinces of Religion and of Philosophy should be kept scrupulously separate.
The Almohads were interested in questions of theology, but yet Abu Yaaqub and his successors manifested, as far as political conditions permitted, such an appreciation of secular knowledge, that philosophy was enabled to enjoy a brief period of prosperity at their court. [[182]]
2. We find Abu Bekr Mohammed ibn Abdalmalik ibn Tofail al-Qaisi (Abubacer) in the position of Vizir and Body-Physician to Abu Yaaqub, after holding an appointment as Secretary in Granada. His place of birth was the small Andalusian town of Guadix, and he died in Marocco, the seat of Government, in the year 1185. The life that lies between appears to have been by no means eventful. He was fonder of books than of men, and in his sovereign’s great library he gathered, by reading, much information which he required for his art, or which met his ardent thirst for knowledge. He was the dilettante of the philosophers of the West, and was more given to contemplative enjoyment than scientific work. Rarely did he set himself to write. We need not perhaps put absolute faith in his assertion that he could have fundamentally improved the Ptolemaic system. Many Arabs made a like assertion, without carrying it into effect.
Of Ibn Tofail’s poetic ventures, one or two poems have been preserved to us. But his principal endeavour, like that of Ibn Sina, was to combine Greek Science and Oriental Wisdom into a modern view of the world. That was to him a personal concern, just as it was to Ibn Baddja. He too occupied his mind with the relation of the individual man to Society and its prejudices. But he went farther: Ibn Baddja, as a rule made out the individual thinker or a small association of independent thinkers, as constituting a State within the State,—a copy, as it were, of the great total, or a model for happier times: Ibn Tofail on the other hand, turned to consider the original.
3. He states the case clearly, in his work “Hai ibn Yaqzan”. The scenery is contributed by two islands, on [[183]]one of which he sets human society with its conventions, and on the other an individual man, who is being developed naturally. This society as a whole is governed by lower impulses, subjected only to some measure of outward restraint by a grossly sensuous religion. But out of this society two men, called Salaman and Asal (Absal, cf. [IV, 4 § 7]), rise to rational knowledge and control of their desires. Accommodating himself to the popular religion, the first, who is of a practical turn of mind, contrives to rule the people; but the second, being of speculative disposition and mystic leanings, wanders off to the island which lay opposite, and which he imagines to be uninhabited,—there to devote himself to study and ascetic discipline.