The Arabians cultivated philosophy with characteristic ardor, and founded upon it the fame of many ingenious and erudite men. Al-Farabi, in Transoxiana, died in 950. It is affirmed that he spoke seventy languages, wrote upon all the sciences, and collected them into an encyclopædia. Al-Gazeli of Thous, who submitted religion to the test of philosophy, died in 1111. Avicenna, from the vicinity of Chyraz, who died in 1037, was a profound philosopher, as well as a celebrated physician. Averrhoes of Cordova, was the most erudite commentator on the works of Aristotle, and died in 1198. The system of the great Macedonian metaphysician was well fitted to the mathematical genius of the Arabians, and they worshiped him as a sort of divinity. According to their belief, all philosophy was to be found in his writings, and they explained every problem according to his arbitrary rules. In the preceding chapter, we have seen with what success the Arabians cultivated all the sciences; and let us here add that, while of all their studies, philosophy was the one in particular which penetrated most rapidly into the West, and had the greatest influence in the schools of Europe, it was the one, in fact, the progress of which was the least real. The ardent sons of Shem were more ingenious than profound, more abstract than practical, and attached themselves rather to the subtleties of fancy than to the substantial ideas of reason. They possessed many qualities which enabled them to dazzle, but few attributes of a character adapted to instruct. More enthusiastic than enterprising, they were willing to place themselves under the supreme dictation of another, rather than to feed their own minds at the original sources of knowledge. They gathered up much that had been produced by their superiors in the East, and brought it forward as the nourishment of still nobler races destined to succeed them; but they produced little that was native to themselves, especially in the realm of philosophy, and now exert absolutely no influence on western mind. The human spirit was not less active and indomitable in the middle age than at earlier periods; and although it was placed under the severest religious restrictions, it still sought to render to itself an account of its speculative belief. The more methodical system of instruction which originated in the cloisters, and ascended thence to the universities, gave rise to diversified sects, whose impassioned conflicts occasioned increased liberty of disquisition. For a long time the scholastic philosophy was exercised in a circle it did not itself trace, and which it dared not pass; but meanwhile it was approaching emancipation, and grew finally into a bolder strength and traversed broader realms. Still it was not thought in that exact form and absolute freedom which should characterize philosophy, and the pedantic system therefore ended with the age it was created to serve.