The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn YokdhanIbn Tufayl, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Malik
Islamic
The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan
Ibn Tufayl, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Malik
Islamic philosophy -- Early works to 1800
Sec.. 48. When his Contemplation had proceeded thus far, and he was got to
some distance from sensible Objects, and was now just upon the Confines
of the intellectual World, he dissident, and inclin'd rather to the
sensible World, which he was more used to. Therefore he retir'd from the
Consideration of abstracted _Body_,(since he found that his Senses could
by no means reach it, neither could he comprehend it) and applied
himself to the Consideration of the most simple sensible Bodies he could
find, which were those four, about which he had been exercis'd. And
first of all he consider'd the _Water_, which he found, if let alone in
that Condition which its Form requir'd, had these two things in it,
_viz_. Sensible Cold, and a Propension to move downwards; But if heated
by the Fire or the Sun, its Coldness was remov'd, but its Propension to
move downwards still remain'd: But afterwards, when it came to be more
vehemently heated, it lost its tendency downwards, and mounted upwards;
and so it was wholly depriv'd of both those Properties which us'd
constantly to proceed from it, and from its Form: Nor did he know any
thing more of its Form, but only that these two Actions proceeded from
thence; and when these two ceas'd, the Nature of the Form was alter'd,
and the watry Form was remov'd from that Body, since there appear'd in
it Actions, which must needs owe their Origin to another Form. Therefore
it must have receiv'd another Form which had not been there before,from
which arose those Actions, which never us'd to appear in it whilst it
had the other Form.
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