| 11:16a |
Don't despair, Avicennam arī bija problēmas
I read the Metaphysics [of Aristotle], but I could not comprehend its contents, and its author's object remained obscure to me, even when I had gone back and read it forty times and had got to the point where I had memorized it. In spite of this I could not understand it nor its object, and I despaired of myself and said, "This is a book which there is no way of understanding." But one day in the afternoon when I was at the booksellers' quarter a salesman approached with a book in his hand which he was calling out for sale. (...) So I bought it and, lo and behold, it was Abu Nasr al-Farabi's book on the objects of the Metaphysics. I returned home and was quick to read it, and in no time the objects of that book became clear to me because I had got to the point of having memorized it by heart.
Ibn Sīnā (ap 980-1037)
iekš William E. Gohlam, ed., The Life of Ibn Sina, 1974, pp. 33-35 |