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Averroism, born of this enthusiasm, may be justly considered not only the precursor of Reform, but also the father of modern Rationalism.

Padua adopted Averroism, in the fourteenth century, because of its medical contents; in the two following centuries this system was emptied of heart and life, but pattered and mumbled by pretentious pedants in North-east Italy it prevailed till the seventeenth, when after a reign of three centuries it was succeeded by the Cartesian.

Thus we may regard Michael as the founder of Paduan Averroism.

Yet, in spite of Petrarch’s gibes, Averroism in its spring had nursed Padua with the milk of natural science.

In his followers these doctrines become grosser and grosser, and, fused with other Arabian doctrine, prepared for and afterwards strengthened the Averroism of Padua, in the xv-xvith century, in which system it was taught that the universal soul, dipping for the time into the individual man, is at death resumed into the universal soul.