or AVICENNES, the prince of Arabian philosophers and physicians, was born at Affena, a village in the neighbourhood of Bokhara. His father was from Balkh in Peria, and had married at Bokhara. The first years of Avicenes were devoted to the study of the Koran and the Belles Lettres. He soon showed what he was likely to become afterwards; and the progress he made was so rapid, that when he was but ten years old, he was perfectly intelligent in the most hidden senses of the Koran.

Abou-Abdoullah, a native of Napoulous in Syria, at that time professed philosophy at Bokhara with the greatest reputation. Avicenes studied under him the principles of logic; but soon disgusted with the slow manner of the schools, he set about studying alone, and read all the authors that had written on philosophy, without any other help than that of their commentators. Mathematics had no fewer charms for him; and after reading the first six propositions of Euclid, he got alone to the last, having made himself perfect master of them, and treasured up all of them equally in his memory.

Possessed with an extreme avidity to be acquainted with all sorts of sciences, he likewise devoted himself to the study of medicine. Persuaded that this divine art consists as much in practice as in theory, he sought all opportunities of seeing the sick; and afterwards confessed that he had learned more from experience than from all the books he had read. He was now in his 16th year, and already was celebrated for being the light of his age. He resolved at this age to resume his studies of philosophy, which medicine had made him neglect; and he spent a year and a half in this painful labour, without ever sleeping all this time a whole night together. If he felt himself oppressed by sleep, or exhausted by study, a glass of wine refreshed his wasted spirits, and gave him new vigour for study; if in spite of him his eyes for a few minutes shut out the light, it then happened to him to recollect and meditate upon all the things that had occupied his thoughts before sleep. At the age of 21, he conceived the bold design of incorporating, in one work, all the objects of human knowledge; and carried it into execution in an Encyclopedie of 20 volumes, to which he gave the title of the Utility of Utilities.

Several great princes had been taken dangerously ill, and Avicenes was the only one that could know their ailments and cure them. His reputation increased daily, and all the kings of Asia desired to retain him in their families.

Mahmud, the son of Sabektekin, the first sultan of the Dynasty of the Samanides, was then the most powerful prince of the east. Imagining that an implicit obedience should be paid by all manner of persons to the injunctions of his will, he wrote a haughty letter to Mamun sultan of Kharazm, ordering him to send Avicenes to him, who was at his court, with several other learned men. Philosophy, the friend of liberty and independence, looks down with scorn on the shackles of compulsion and restraint. Avicenes, accustomed to the most flattering distinctions among the great, could not endure the imperious manner of Mahmud's inviting him to his court, and refused to go there. But the sultan of Kharazm, who dreaded his resentment, obliged the philosopher to depart with others whom that prince had demanded to be sent to him.

Avicenes pretended to obey; but instead of repairing to Gazna, he took the rout of Giorgian. Mahmud, who had gloried in the thoughts of keeping him at his palace, was greatly irritated at his flight. He dispatched portraits done in crayons of this philosopher to all the princes of Asia, with orders to have him conducted to Gazna, if he appeared in their courts. But Avicenes had fortunately escaped the most diligent search after him. He arrived in the capital of Giorgian, where under a disguised name he performed many admirable cures.

Cabous then reigned in that country. A nephew, whom he was extremely fond of, being fallen sick, the most able physicians were called in, and none of them were able to know his ailment, or give him any cure. Avicenes was at last consulted. So soon as he had felt the young prince's pulse, he was confident with himself, that his illness proceeded from a violent love, which he dared not to declare. Avicenes commanded the person who had the care of the different apartments in the palace, to name them all in their respective order. A more lively motion in the prince's pulse, at hearing mentioned one of these apartments, betrayed a part of his secret. The keeper then had orders to name all the slaves that inhabited that apartment. At the name of one of these beauties, the young Cabous could not contain himself; an extraordinary beating of his pulse completed the discovery of what he in vain desired to keep concealed. Avicenes, now fully assured that this slave was the cause of this prince's illness, declared, that she alone had the power to cure him.

The Sultan's consent was necessary, and he of course was curious to see his nephew's physician. He had scarce looked at him, when he knew in his features those of the crayoned portrait sent him by Mahmud; but Cabous, far from forcing Avicenes to repair to Gazna, retained him for some time with him, and heaped honours and presents on him.

This philosopher passed afterwards into the court of Nedjmeddevle, Sultan of the race of the Bouides. Being appointed first physician to that prince, he found means to gain his confidence to a great degree, that he raised him to the post of Grand Vizir. But he did not long enjoy that illustrious dignity. Too great an attachment for pleasures, especially those of love and the table, made him lose at the same time his post and his master's favour. From that time Avicenes felt all the rigours of adversity, which he had brought upon himself by his ill conduct. He wandered about as a fugitive, and was often obliged to shift the place of his habitation to secure his life from danger. He died at Hamadan, aged 58 years, in the 428th year of the Hegira, and of Chiiil 1036.

The perfect knowledge he had of physic did not secure him from the ailments that afflict human nature. He was attacked by several maladies in the course of his life, and particularly was very subject to the colic. His excesses in pleasures, and his infirmities, made a poet say, who wrote his epitaph, that the profound study of philosophy had not taught him good morals, nor that of medicine the art of preserving his own health. Avicenes, No one composed with greater facility than Avicenes, writing, when he sat down to it, 50 pages generally in a day, without fatiguing himself. The doctors of Chiras, having made a collection of objections against one of his metaphysical works, sent it to him at Ispahan by Cæsem. This learned man, not arriving till towards evening, came to Avicenes's house, with whom he sat discoursing till midnight. When Cæsem was retired, he wrote an answer to the objections of the Chirazians, and finished it before sunrise. He immediately delivered it to Cæsem, telling him, that he had made all possible dispatch in order not to detain him any longer at Ispahan.

Avicenes, after his death, enjoyed so great a reputation, that till the 12th century he was preferred for the study of philosophy and medicine to all his predecessors. His works were the only writings in vogue in schools, even in Europe. The following are the titles:

1. Of the Utility and Advantage of Sciences, XX books. 2. Of Innocence and Criminality, II books. 3. Of Health and Remedies, XVIII books. 4. On the means of preserving Health, III books. 5. Canons of Physic, XIV books. 6. On Astronomical Observations, I book. 7. On Mathematical Sciences. 8. Of Theorems, or Mathematical and Theological Demonstrations, I book. 9. On the Arabic Language, and its Proprieties, X books. 10. On the Last Judgment. 11. On the Origin of the Soul, and the Resurrection of Bodies. 12. Of the end we should propose to ourselves in Harangues and Philosophical Argumentations. 13. Demonstration of the collateral Lines in the Sphere. 14. Abridgement of Euclid. 15. On Finity and Infinity. 16. On Physics and Metaphysics. 17. On Animals and Vegetables, &c. 18. Encyclopedic, 20 volumes—Some, however, charge him with having stolen what he published from a celebrated physician who had been his master. This man had acquired so much honour and wealth, that he was solicited by many to take their sons to be his scholars, or even his servants; but being resolved not to discover the secrets of his art, he would receive none of them. Avicenes's mother formed the following stratagem: she offered him her son as a servant, pretending he was naturally deaf and dumb; and the youth, by his mother's instructions, counterfeited these defects so well, that the physician, after making several trials to discover the reality of them, took the boy into his service, and by degrees trusted him so far as to leave his writings open in his room when he went abroad: Avicenes took that opportunity to transcribe them, and carried the copies to his mother; and after the death of his master he published them under his own name. Indeed if we reflect that he lived but 58 years, that he was a wanderer and a fugitive, and that he was much addicted to his pleasures, we shall have some difficulty to conceive how he could find time to compose so many works. Physic, however, is indebted to him for the discovery of cassia, rhubarb, mirabolans, tamarinds; and from him also, it is said, came to us the art of making sugar.