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But a restless eagerness for knowledge urged me farther: I lighted upon the history of ancient literature, and from that fell into an encyclopaedism, in which I hastily read Gessner's "Isagoge" and Morhov's "Polyhistor," and thus gained a general notion of how many strange things might have happened in learning and life.
Porphyry, in his Isagoge, approached so near to the true conception of essences, that only one step remained to be taken, but this step, so easy in appearance, was reserved for the Nominalists of modern times.
This problem of universals is ever the most vexed one among logicians, to such a degree, indeed, that even Porphyry, writing in his "Isagoge" regarding universals, dared not attempt a final pronouncement thereon, saying rather: "This is the deepest of all problems of its kind."
There are five books on music, two on arithmetic, one on geometry, translations of Aristotle's treatises on logic, with commentaries; of Porphyry's "Isagoge," with commentaries, and a commentary on Cicero's "Topica." Besides, he wrote several treatises in logic and rhetoric himself, one on the use of the syllogism, and one on topics, and in addition a series of theological works.
As a philosopher Porphyry was chiefly important as the immediate successor of Plotinus in the neoplatonic school at Rome, but his "Isagoge" had extraordinary weight among the medieval logicians. Anselm of Laon was born somewhere about 1040, and is said to have studied under the famous St. Anselm, later archbishop of Canterbury, at the monastery of Bec.
His famous "Introduction" or "Isagoge," a very popular book in the Middle Ages, is a translation of the "Microtegni" of Galen, a small hand-book, of which a translation is appended to Cholmeley's "John of Gaddesden." Leclerc: Histoire de la medecine arabe, Tome I, p. 139. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1912, pp. 136-166.
His compendium of Galen was the text-book of medicine in the West for many centuries. It was known as the "Isagoge in Artem Parvam Galeni." His son, Ishac Ben Honein, and his nephew, Hobeisch, were also famous as medical practitioners and translators. Still another of these Arabian Christians, who acquired a reputation as writers in medicine, was Alkindus.
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