The individual, or passive, or subjective intellect, is an emanation from the universal, and constitutes what is termed the soul of man.  In one sense it is perishable and ends with the body, but in a higher sense it endures; for, after death, it returns to or is absorbed in the universal soul, and thus of all human souls there remains at last but one—­the aggregate of them all, life is not the property of the individual, it belongs to Nature.  The end of, man is to enter into union more and more complete with the active intellect—­reason.  In that the happiness of the soul consists.  Our destiny is quietude.  It was the opinion of Averroes that the transition from the individual to the universal is instantaneous at death, but the Buddhists maintain that human personality continues in a declining manner for a certain term before nonentity, or Nirwana, is attained.

Philosophy has never proposed but two hypotheses to explain the system of the world:  first, a personal God existing apart, and a human soul called into existence or created, and thenceforth immortal; second, an impersonal intelligence, or indeterminate God, and a soul emerging from and returning to him.  As to the origin of beings, there are two opposite opinions:  first, that they are created from nothing; second, that they come by development from pre-existing forms.  The theory of creation belongs to the first of the above hypotheses, that of evolution to the last.

Philosophy among the Arabs thus took the same direction that it had taken in China, in India, and indeed throughout the East.  Its whole spirit depended on the admission of the indestructibility of matter and force.  It saw an analogy between the gathering of the material of which the body of man consists from the vast store of matter in Nature, and its final restoration to that store, and the emanation of the spirit of man from the universal Intellect, the Divinity, and its final reabsorption.

Having thus indicated in sufficient detail the philosophical characteristics of the doctrine of emanation and absorption, I have in the next place to relate its history.  It was introduced into Europe by the Spanish Arabs.  Spain was the focal point from which, issuing forth, it affected the ranks of intelligence and fashion all over Europe, and in Spain it had a melancholy end.

The Spanish khalifs had surrounded themselves with all the luxuries of Oriental life.  They had magnificent palaces, enchanting gardens, seraglios filled with beautiful women.  Europe at the present day does not offer more taste, more refinement, more elegance, than might have been seen, at the epoch of which we are speaking, in the capitals of the Spanish Arabs.  Their streets were lighted and solidly paved.  The houses were frescoed and carpeted; they were warmed in winter by furnaces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air brought by underground pipes from flower-beds.  They had baths, and libraries, and dining-halls, fountains