the subject insured; in fact, the payment has been for averting such a loss. And it suggests that the insurer is not liable for salvage where the policy is free of particular average, which does not accord with practice.
An important question as to an insurer’s liability for G.A. arose in the case of the Brigella (1893, P. 189), where a shipowner had incurred expenses which would have been the subject of G.A. contributions, but that he alone was interested in the voyage. There were no contributories. He claimed from the insurers of the ship what would have been the ship’s G.A. contribution had there been other persons to contribute in respect of freight or cargo. The claim was disallowed on the ground that there could be no G.A. in such circumstances, and therefore no basis for a claim against the insurer. The liability of the insurer was thus made to depend, not upon the character of the loss, but upon the fact or possibility of contribution. But this was not followed in Montgomery v. Indemnity Mutual M. I. Co. (1901, 1 K.B. 147). There ship, freight and cargo all belonged to the same person. He had insured the cargo but not the ship. The cargo underwriters were held liable to pay a contribution to damage done to the ship by cutting away masts for the general safety. The loss was in theory spread over all the interests at risk, and they had undertaken to bear the cargo’s share of such losses. Their liability did not depend upon the accident of whether the interests all belonged to one person or not. This agrees with the view taken in the United States.
As to Particular Average, see under Insurance: Marine.
Authorities.—Lowndes on General Average (4th ed., London, 1888); Abbott’s Merchant Ships and Seamen (14th ed., London, 1901); Arnould’s Marine Insurance (7th ed., London, 1901); Carver’s Carriage by Sea (4th ed., London, 1905). (T. G. C.)
AVERNUS, a lake of Campania, Italy, about 112 m. N. of Baiae. It is an old volcanic crater, nearly 2 m. in circumference, now, as in Roman times, filled with water. Its depth is 213 ft., and its height above sea-level 312 ft.; it has no natural outlet. In ancient times it was surrounded by dense forests, and was the centre of many legends. It was represented as the entrance by which both Odysseus and Aeneas descended to the infernal regions, and as the abode of the Cimmerii. Its Greek name, Ἄορνος, was explained to mean that no bird could fly across it. Hannibal made a pilgrimage to it in 214 B.C. Agrippa in 37 B.C. converted it into a naval harbour, the Portus Iulius; joining it to the Lacus Lucrinus by a canal, and connecting the latter with the sea, he reduced the distance to Cumae by boring a tunnel over 12 m. in length, now called Grotta della Pace, through the hill on the north-west side of Lake Avernus. After Sextus Pompeius had been subdued, the chief naval harbour was transferred to Misenum. Nero’s works for his proposed canal from Baiae to the Tiber (A.D. 64) seem to have begun near Lake Avernus; indeed, according to one theory, the Grotta della Pace would be a portion of this canal. On the east side of the lake are remains of baths, including a great octagonal hall known as the Temple of Apollo, built of brickwork, and belonging to the 1st century. The so-called Grotto of the Cumaean Sibyl, on the south side, is a rock-cut passage, ventilated by vertical apertures, possibly a part of the works connected with the naval harbour. To the south-east of the lake is the Monte Nuovo, a volcanic hill upheaved in 1538, with a deep extinct crater in the centre. To the south is the Lacus Lucrinus.
See J. Beloch, Campanien (2nd ed., Breslau, 1890), pp. 168 seq. (T. As.)
AVERROES [Abūl-Walīd Muḥammad ibn-Aḥmad Ibn-Muḥammad ibn-Rushd] (1126–1198), Arabian philosopher, was born at Cordova. His early life was occupied in mastering the curriculum of theology, jurisprudence, mathematics, medicine and philosophy, under the approved teachers of the time. The years of his prime fell during the last period of Mahommedan rule in Spain under the Almohades (q.v.). It was Ibn-Tufail (Abubacer), the philosophic vizier of Yusef, who introduced Averroes to that prince, and Avenzoar (Ibn-Zuhr), the greatest of Moslem physicians, was his friend. Averroes, who was versed in the Malekite system of law, was made cadi of Seville (1169), and in similar appointments the next twenty-five years of his life were passed. We find him at different periods in Seville, Cordova and Morocco, probably as physician to Yusef al-Mansur, who took pleasure in engaging him in discussions on the theories of philosophy and their bearings on the faith of Islam. But science and free thought then, as now, in Islam, depended almost solely on the tastes of the wealthy and the favour of the monarch. The ignorant fanaticism of the multitude viewed speculative studies with deep dislike and distrust, and deemed any one a Zendik (infidel) who did not rest content with the natural science of the Koran. These smouldering hatreds burst into open flame about the year 1195. Averroes was accused of heretical opinions and pursuits, stripped of his honours, and banished to a place near Cordova, where his actions were closely watched. At the same time efforts were made to stamp out all liberal culture in Andalusia, so far as it went beyond the little medicine, arithmetic and astronomy required for practical life. But the storm soon passed. Averroes was recalled to Morocco when the transient passion of the people had been satisfied, and for a brief period survived his restoration to honour. He died in the year before his patron, al-Mansur, with whom (in 1199) the political power of the Moslems came to an end, as did the culture of liberal science with Averroes. The philosopher left several sons, some of whom became jurists like his own grandfather. One of them has left an essay, expounding his father’s theory of the intellect. The personal character of Averroes is known to us only in a general way, and as we can gather it from his writings. His clear, exhaustive and dignified style of treatment evidences the rectitude and nobility of the man. In the histories of his own nation he has little place; the renown which spread in his lifetime to the East ceased with his death, and he left no school. Yet, from a note in a manuscript, we know that he had intelligent readers in Spain more than a century afterwards. His historic fame came from the Christian Schoolmen, whom he almost initiated into the system of Aristotle, and who, but vaguely discerning the expositors who preceded, admired in his commentaries the accumulated results of two centuries of labours.
The literary works of Averroes include treatises on jurisprudence, grammar, astronomy, medicine and philosophy. In 1859 a work of Averroes was for the first time published in Arabic by the Bavarian Academy, and a German translation appeared in 1873 by the editor, J. Müller. It is a treatise entitled Philosophy and Theology, and, with the exception of a German version of the essay on the conjunction of the intellect with man, is the first translation which enables the non-Semitic scholar to form any adequate idea of Averroes. The Latin translations of most of his works are barbarous and obscure. A great part of his writings, particularly on jurisprudence and astronomy, as well as essays on special logical subjects, prolegomena to philosophy, criticisms on Avicenna and Alfarabius (Fārābī), remain in manuscript in the Escorial and other libraries. The Latin editions of his medical works include the Colliget (i.e. Kulliyyat, or summary), a résumé of medical science, and a commentary on Avicenna’s poem on medicine; but Averroes, in medical renown, always stood far below Avicenna. The Latin editions of his philosophical works comprise the Commentaries on Aristotle, the Destructio Destructionis (against Ghazāli), the De Substantia Orbis and a double treatise De Animae Beatitudine. The Commentaries of Averroes fall under three heads:—the larger commentaries, in which a paragraph is quoted at large, and its clauses expounded one by one; the medium commentaries, which cite only the first words of a section; and the paraphrases or analyses, treatises on the subjects of the Aristotelian books. The larger commentary was an innovation of Averroes; for Avicenna, copied by Albertus Magnus, gave under the rubrics furnished by Aristotle works in which, though the materials were borrowed, the grouping was his own. The great commentaries exist only for the Posterior Analytics, Physics, De Caelo, De Anima and Metaphysics. On the History of Animals no commentary at all exists, and Plato’s Republic is substituted for the then inaccessible Politics. The Latin editions of these works between 1480 and 1580 number about 100. The first
