Book, which he calls Alshepha, does answer the end which you aim at, nor have any of the Spanish Philosophers[13] writ fully and satisfactorily about it.  Because those Scholars which were bred in Spain, before the Knowledge of Logick and Philosophy was broach’d amongst them, spent their whole Lives in Mathematicks, in which it must be allow’d, they made a great Progress, but went no farther.  After them came a Generation of Men, who apply’d themselves more to the Art of Reasoning, in which they excell’d their Predecessors, yet not so as to attain to true Perfection.  So that one of them said,

T’is hard the kinds of Knowledge are but two,
The One erroneous, the Other true.
The former profits nothing when ’tis gain’d,
The other’s difficult to be attain’d.

After these came others, who still advanc’d further, and made nearer approaches to the Truth; among whom there was one that had a sharper Wit, or truer notions of things than Avenpace, but he was too much taken up with Worldly Business, and Died before he had time to open the Treasury of his Knowledge, so that most of those pieces of his which are extant, are imperfect; particularly his Book about the Soul) and his Tedbiro ’lmotawahhid, i.e. How a Man ought to manage himself that leads a Solitary Life So are his Logicks and Physicks.  Those Pieces of his which are compleat, are only short Tracts and some occasional Letters.  Nay, in his Epistle concerning the UNION, he himself confesses that he had wrote nothing compleat, where he says, That it would require a great deal of trouble and pains to express that clearly which he had undertaken to prove; and, that the method which he had made use of in explaining himself, was not in many places so exact as it might have been; and, that he design’d, if he had time, to alter it.  So much for Avenpace, I for my part never saw him, and as for his Contemporaries, they were far inferiour to him, nor did I ever see any of their Works.  Those who are now alive, are, either such as are still advancing forwards, or else such as have left off, without attaining to perfection; if there are any other, I know nothing of them.

As to those Works of Alpharabius which are extant, they are most of them Logick.  There are a great many things very dubious in his Philosophical Works; for in his Mellatolphadelah, i.e. The most excellent Sect, he asserts expressly, that the Souls of Wicked Men shall suffer everlasting Punishment; and yet says as positively in his Politicks that they shall be dissolv’d and annihilated, and that the Souls of the Perfect shall remain for ever.  And then in his Ethicks, speaking concerning the Happiness of Man, he says, that it is only in this Life, and then adds, that whatsoever People talk of besides, is meer