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  AVICENA’S OFFERING
  _to the_
  PRINCE


                    «E l’anima umana la qual è colla nobiltà della
                    potenzia ultima, cioè ragione, participa della
                    divina natura a guisa di sempiterna Intelligenza;
                    perocchè l’anima è tanto in quella sovrana potenzia
                    nobilitata, e dinudata da materia, che la divina
                    luce, come in Angiolo, raggia in quella; e però è
                    l’uomo divino animale da’ Filosofi chiamato.»[1]

                                          (=Dante=, _Convito_, III, 2.)




  STAMPERIA DI NICOLA PADERNO
  _S. Salvatore Corte Regia, 10_
  VERONA, ITALIA




  A
  COMPENDIUM
  ON THE
  SOUL,


  BY
  _Abû-'Aly al-Husayn Ibn 'Abdallah Ibn Sînâ:_

  TRANSLATED, FROM THE ARABIC ORIGINAL,
  BY
  EDWARD ABBOTT van DYCK,

  WITH
  Grateful Acknowledgement of the Substantial Help
  OBTAINED
  From Dr. S. Landauer’s Concise German Translation,
  AND FROM
  James Middleton
  MacDonald’s Literal English Translation;

  AND
  PRINTED
  AT
  _VERONA, ITALY, in THE YEAR 1906_,
  For the Use of Pupils and Students of Government Schools
  IN
  _Cairo, Egypt_.




PREFACE


Several sources out of which to draw information and seek guidance as
to Ibn Sînâ’s biography and writings, and his systems of medicine and
philosophy, are nowadays easily accessible to nearly every one. Among
such sources the following are the best for Egyptian students:

1. Ibn Abi Uçaybi´ah’s “Tabaqât-ul-Atib-ba,” and Wuestenfeld’s
“Arabische Aertzte.”

2. Ibn Khallikân’s “Wafâyât-ul-A´ayân.”

3. Brockelmann’s “Arabische Literatur.”

4. F. Mehren’s Series of Essays on Ibn Sînâ in the Periodical “Muséon”
from the year 1882 and on.

5. Clément Huart’s Arabic Literature, either in the French Original or
in the English Translation.

6. Carra de Vaux’s “Les Grands Philosophes: Avicenna,” Paris, Felix
Alcan, 1900, pp. vii et 302.

7. T. de Boer’s “History of Philosophy in Islâm,” both in Dutch and in
the English translation.

The “Offering to the Prince in the Form of a Compendium on the Soul,”
of which the present Pamphlet is my attempt at an English Translation,
is the least known throughout Egypt and Syria of all Ibn Sînâ’s
many and able literary works: indeed I have failed, after repeated
and prolonged enquiry, to come across so much as one, among my many
Egyptian acquaintances, that had even heard of it.

Doctor Samuel Landauer of the University of Strassburg published
both the Arabic text, and his own concise German translation, of
this Research into the Faculties of the Soul, in volume 29 for the
year 1875 of the Z.d.D.M.G., together with his critical notes
and exhaustively erudite confrontations of the original Arabic with
many Greek passages from Plato, Aristotle, Alexander Aphrodisias, and
others, that Ibn Sînâ had access to, it would appear, second hand,
i.e. through translations. Doctor Landauer made use also of a very rare
Latin translation by Andreas Alpagus, printed at Venice in 1546; and
of the Cassel second edition of Jehuda Hallévy’s religious Dialogue
entitled Khusari, which is in rabbinical Hebrew, and on pages 385 to
400 of which the views of “philosophers” on the Soul are set forth,
Doctor Landauer having discovered to his agreeable surprise that those
15 pages are simply a word for word excerpt from this Research by Ibn
Sînâ. For the Arabic text itself, he had at his command only two
manuscript copies, the one, preserved in the Library at Leyden, being
very faulty; and the other, in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana at Milan,
being far more accurate and correct.

This text was reprinted talis qualis, but with omission of every kind
of note, in 1884 at Beirût, Syria, by Khal