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 wha