1. Abu Ali al-Hosain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina (Avicenna) was born at Efshene in the neighbourhood of Bokhara, in the year 980, of a family connected with the public service. He received his secular and religious education at home, where Persian and anti-Muslim traditions were still full of life and vigour. Then the youth, precocious alike in body and in mind, studied philosophy and medicine in Bokhara. He was seventeen years old when he had the good fortune to cure the prince, Nukh ibn Mansur, and to obtain the privilege of access to his library. From that time forward he was his own teacher, in scientific research and in practice, and proved able to turn to account the life and culture of his time. He kept continually venturing his fortunes in the political working of the smaller States: Probably he could never have submitted to a great prince, any more than to a teacher in Science. He wandered on from court to court, at one time employed in State-Administration, at another as a teacher and author, until he became vizir of Shems Addaula in Hamadan. After the death of this prince he was consigned to prison by his son, for some months. He then proceeded farther afield, to the court of Ala Addaula in Ispahan. And at last, having returned to Hamadan, which Ala Addaula had conquered, he died there in 1037, at the age of 57; and there his grave is pointed out to this day. 2. The notion that Ibn Sina pushed on beyond Farabi and reached a purer Aristotelianism, is perhaps the greatest error which has found a footing in the history of Muslim Philosophy. What did this our man of the world in reality care for Aristotle? It was not his concern to commit himself wholly to the spirit of any system. He took what was to his liking, wherever he found it, but he had a preference for the shallow paraphrases of Themistius. Thus he became the great philosopher of accommodation in the East, and the true forerunner of compendium-writers for the whole world. He knew how to group with skill his material, collected as it was from every quarter, and to present it in an intelligible form, although not without sophistry. Every moment of his life was fully employed. In the daytime he attended to State affairs or gave instruction to his pupils: the evening was devoted to the social enjoyments of friendship and love; and many a night found him engaged in composition, pen in hand, and goblet within reach lest he should fall asleep. Time and circumstances determined the direction of this activity. If at the prince’s court he had the requisite leisure, and a library at hand, he wrote his Canon of Medicine or the great Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. While travelling, he composed epitomes and smaller works. In prison he wrote poems and pious meditations, but always in a pleasing form; in fact his smaller mystical writings have a poetic charm about them. When commissioned to do so, he put even Science, Logic and Medicine into verse,—a practice