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 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.