Ibn Tufayl - Hayy ibn Yaqzan / Bent el-Khass
""Living Son of the Vigilant"" / ""The Awakening of the Soul"".
""In which is demonstrated by what Methods one may...attain the Knowledge of things NATURAL and SUPERNATURAL"".
Translated from the Arabic original by Simon Ockley and edited by Edward Abbott van Dyck.
This intense philosophical tract, which also surveys the major thinkers of the age besides making its own hypothesis in the form of a kind of ""novel"", was widely read, and came to inspire the British author Daniel Defoe to write his Robinson Crusoe.
Appended is a very rare work in French and Arabic called La Légende de Bent El Khass / ""The Legend of Bent el-Khass"" (not by ibn Tufayl).
English, French & Arabic, bookmarked, facsimile PDF eBook, 25 Megabytes, 84 pages
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THE IMPROVEMENT OF
HUMAN REASON,
EXHIBITED IN THE LIFE OF
Hayy ibn Yakzan :
Written in ARABIC above 600 Years ago,
BY
Abu Ja’afar ibn Tufayl
IN WHICH IS DEMONSTRATED
By what Methods one may, by the mere light of nature, attain the Knowledge of things natural and supernatural ; more particularly the Knowledge of god, and the Affairs of another Life.
Translated from the Original Arabic by Simon Ockley, A. M., Vicar of Swavesey in Cambridgeshire, and Printed by Edm. Powell in Blackfriars.
LONDON 17O8
Reprinted, with slight changes, by
Edward A. van Dyck,
For the Use of his Pupils, at
CAIRO, Egypt: 1905
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TRANSLATOR’S PREFACE
When Mr. Pococke first published this Arabic Author with his accurate Latin version, Anno 1671, Dr. Pococke his father, that late eminent professor of the oriental languages at the University of Oxford, prefixed a preface to it ; in which he tells us that he has good reason to think that this author was contemporary with Ibn Rushd, who died very ancient in the Year of the Hijrah 595, which is coincident with the Year 1198 of our Lord ; according to which account the Author lived something above 500 Years ago.
He lived in Spain, as appears from one or two passages in this book. He wrote some other pieces, which are not come to our hands. This has been very well received in the East ; one argument of which is that it has been translated by Rabbi Moses Narbonensis into Hebrew, and illustrated with a large commentary. The design of the author is to show how human capacity, unaided by any external help, may, by due application, attain to the Knowledge of natural things, and so by degrees find out its dependence upon a Superior Being, the immortality of the soul, and all things necessary to salvation.
How well he has succeeded in this attempt, I leave to the reader to judge. It is certain that he was a man of parts and very good learning, considering the age he lived in, and the way of studying in those times. There are a great many lively strokes in it ; and I doubt not but a judicious reader will find his account in the perusal of it.
I was not willing (though importuned) to undertake the translating into English, because I was informed that it had been done twice already ; once by Dr. Ashwell, another lime by the Quakers, who imagined that there was something in it that favored their enthusiastic notions. However, taking it for granted that both these translations were not made out of the original Arabic, but out of the Latin, I did not question but they had mistaken the sense of the author in many places. Besides, observing that a great many of my friends whom I had a desire to oblige, and other persons whom I would willingly incline to a more favorable opinion of Arab Learning, had not seen this book ; and withal, hoping that I might add something by way of annotation or appendix, which would not be altogether useless ; I at last ventured to translate it anew.
I have here and there added a note, in which there is an account given of some great man, some custom of the Muslims explained, or something of that nature, which I hope will not be unacceptable. And lest any person should, through mistake, make any ill use of it, I have subjoined an appendix, the design of which the reader may see in its proper place.
Simon Ockley.
The Bookseller to the Reader
When I first undertook the publication of this English Translation, I thought it would not be amiss to present the world with a specimen of it first. But, since the introduction is such that the reader can no more by it give a guess at what is contained in the book itself, than a man can judge of his entertainment by seeing the cloth laid ; I have thought it necessary to give him a Bill of Fare.
The design of the author, who was a Muslim philosopher, is to show how human reason may, by observation and experience, arrive at the knowledge of natural things, and from thence to supernatural ; particularly the knowledge of God and a future state. And in order to this, he supposes a person brought up by himself, where he was altogether destitute of any instruction, but what he could get from his own observation.
He lays the scene in some Fortunate Island, situated under the Equinoctial ; where he supposes the philosopher, either to have been bred (according to Ibn Sina's hypothesis, who conceived a possibility of a man's being formed by the influence of the planets upon Matter rightly disposed) without either father or mother; or else exposed in his infancy, and providentially suckled by a roe. Not that our author believed any such matter, but only having designed to contrive a convenient place for his philosopher, so as to leave him to reason by himself, and make his observations without any guide. In which relation he proposes both these ways, without speaking one word in favor of either.
Then he shows by what steps and degrees he advanced in the knowledge of natural things, till at last he perceived the necessity of acknowledging an infinite, eternal, wise Creator, and also the immateriality and immortality of his own soul, and that its happiness consisted only in a continued conjunction with this supreme Being.
The matter of this book is curious, and full of useful theorems ; he makes most use of the Peripatetic Philosophy, which he seems to have well understood ; it must be confessed indeed that when he comes to talk of the union with God, etc., (as in the introduction), there are some enthusiastic notions, which are particularly considered and refuted by the editor in his appendix.
Whose design in publishing this translation was to give those who are as yet unacquainted with it, a taste of the acumen and genius of the Arab philosophers, and to excite young scholars to the reading of those authors which, through a groundless conceit of their impertinence and ignorance, have been too long neglected.
And though we do not pretend to any discoveries in this book, especially at this time of day, when all parts of learning are cultivated with so much exactness ; [Antioch Gate note: Islamic philosophy is still a vibrant - possibly the most vibrant - genre in the field] yet we hope that it will not be altogether unacceptable to the curious reader, to know what the state of learning was among the Arabs five hundred years since. And if what we shall here communicate shall seem little in respect of the discoveries of this discerning age ; yet we are confident that any European, who shall compare the learning in this book with what was published by any of his own countrymen at that time, will find himself obliged in conscience to give our Author fair quarter.
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CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface
The Bookseller to the Reader
Ibn Tufayl’s Introduction, p. 7
The History of Hayy Ibn Yakzan, p. 15
What is a Sufi p. 70
Appendix, p. 71
La Légende de Bent El Khass (an appended book, regarding an Algerian legend – quite rare), 17 pages
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QUOTES
p 10:
Now, my Dear Friend, I do not here, when I speak of the Ideas of the Contemplative, mean what they learn from the study of Physics; nor by the notions of those who have attained to the UNION, what they learn from the study of Metaphysics (for these two ways of learning are vastly different, and must by no means be confounded). But what I mean by the Ideas of the Contemplative is what is attained by the study of Metaphysics of which kind is that which Ibn Baja understood…
p. 11:
Nor would I have you think that the philosophy which we find in the books of Aristotle, and al-Farabi, and in Ibn Sina’s book which he calls “al-Shifa”, does answer the end which you aim at, nor have any of the Spanish philosophers written fully and satisfactorily about it. Because those scholars who were bred in Spain, before the knowledge of logic and philosophy was broached amongst them, spent their whole lives in mathematics, in which it must be allowed they made great progress, but went no farther. After them came a generation of men who applied themselves more to the Art of Reasoning, in which they excelled their predecessors, yet not so far as to attain to true perfection.
p. 12:
As to those works of al-Farabi which are extant, they are most of them Logic. There are a great many things very dubious in his philosophical works; for in his Millatu-l-Fadhilah, i.e. The Most Excellent Sect, he asserts expressly, “that the souls of wicked men shall suffer everlasting punishment;” and yet he says positively, in his Politics, that they shall be dissolved and annihilated, and that the souls of the Perfect shall remain for ever. And then, in his Ethics, speaking concerning the happiness of man, he says that “it is only in this life,” and then adds that…
p. 31:
(¶ 38.) He next considered those bodies which have neither sense, nor nutrition nor growth, such as stones, earth, air and flame, which he perceived had all of them three dimensions, viz., Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and that their differences consisted only in this, that some of them were coloured, others not; some were warm, others cold, and the like. He observed that those bodies which were warm, grew cold; and on the contrary that those which were cold, grew warm. He saw that water was rarified into vapors, and vapors again condensed into water; and that such things as were burnt, were turned into coals, ashes, flame, and smoke; and if in its ascent it were intercepted by an arch of stone or the like, it thickened there and was like other gross, earthly substances. From whence it appeared to him that all things were in reality One…
p. 35:
(¶ 47.) But then, if you took that very same ball, and reduced it into a cubical or oval figure, the dimensions were changed, and did not retain the same Proportion which they had before; and yet the clay still remained the same, without any change…
p. 38:
(¶ 52.) Now because he lived under the Equinoctial Line…all those circles did cut the horizon at right angles, and both North and South were alike to him, and he could see both Pole-Stars: He observed that if a star arose at any time in a great circle, and another star at the same time by a lesser circle, yet nevertheless, as they rose together, so they set together: and he observed it of all the stars, and at all times. From whence he concluded that the heaven was of a spherical figure…
p. 47:
(¶ 70.) Now, since that Animal Spirit which is seated in the heart is of a most exact temperature, as being finer than earth and water, and grosser than fire and air, it has the nature of a mean between them all, and which has no manifest opposition to any of the elements, and by this means is fitted to become that form which constitutes an animal.
p. 52:
(¶ 81.) His imitation of the third sort of attributes, consisted in confining his thoughts to the contemplation of the necessarily self-existent Being. And in order to this, he removed all his affections from sensible things, shut his eyes, stopped his ears, and refrained himself as much as possible from following his imagination, endeavouring to the utmost to think of nothing besides Him; nor to admit together with Him any other object of contemplation. And he used to help himself in this by violently turning himself around, in which performance, when he was very violently exercised, all manner of sensible objects vanished out of his sight…and he beheld by it the necessarily self-existent Being…
p. 68:
(¶ 118.) And when he understood the condition of mankind, and that the greatest part of them were like brute beasts, he knew that all wisdom, direction, and good success, consisted in what the messengers of God had spoken, and the Law delivered; and that there was no other way besides this…
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