The last and greatest philosopher of the West was Abu al-Walid Mohammed Ibn Roshd (1126-98), known as Averroes. While his predecessors sought more or less to at tenuate the theories of Aristotle when they were in direct apposition to religion, Averroes endorsed them to their utmost, and seemed to take pleasure in emphasizing them. In his Opinion science is the sole arbiter in matters of this world; and religion is not a branch of knowledge to be reduced to propositions and systems of dogma, but an inward power, an individual truth which stands distinct from, and not contradictory to, the universalities of scientific law. The perplexing problems of creation, providence and immortality were solved by Averroes in a true Aristotelian spirit. With regard to creation he goes still further than Aristotle himself, declaring that not only is matter eternal, but that form even is potentially existent, otherwise there would be creation ex nihilo, which is inadmissible.
With Averroes the Arabian philosophy came to a close in the Islamic world, but it exerted for centuries great influence on Chris tian schoolmen. Though the Arabian philoso
phers can lay no claim to originality, civiliza tion owes them a debt of gratitude for having preserved the writings of Aristotle the study of which led to the birth of the modern philosophy.
Wenrich, 'De auctorum Grxcorum Versionibus et commentaries Syri acis, Arabicis, Armeniacis, Persicisque' (Leip zig 1842); 'Munk, (Mélanges de Philosophic Juive et
(Paris 1859); Rena'', 'Aver roes et l'Averroisme' (Paris 1862) ; Schnkild ers,
Philosophiz Arabum' (Bonn 1836) ; id.
sur les Ecoles Philosoph igues chez les Arabes' (Paris 1842) ; Diete nci,
zwischen Mensch and Thier' (Berlin 1852) ; and his other translations of the