The subject of general average is only incidentally con nected with that of marine insurance, being itself a distinct branch of maritime law. But the subject of particular average arises directly out of the contract of insurance, and will therefore be best considered in connection with it. (See INSURANCE.) For further information with respect to the subject of average, the reader is referred to the famous work of M. Valin, Commentaire sur I Ordonnance de 1681, t. ii. p. 147-198, ed. 1760; to Emerigon, Traite des Assurances, t. i. pp. 598-674; Arnould on Marine Insurance ; and the treatises on Average of Stevens, Benecke, Baily, Hopkins, and Lowndes. (j. TV A.)
AVERNUS, a lake of Campania in Italy, near Baiae,
occupying the crater of an extinct volcano, and about a
mile and a half in circumference. From the gloomy horror
of its surroundings, and the mephitic character of its exhala
tions, it was regarded by ancient superstition as an entrance
to the infernal regions. It was especially dedicated to
Proserpine, and an oracle was maintained on the spot. In
214 B.C., Hannibal with his army visited the shrine, but
not so much, according to Pliny, for purposes of piety, as in
hope of surprising the garrison of Puteoli. By some critics
the Cimmerians of Homer were supposed to have been the
inhabitants of this locality, and Virgil in his ^Eneid adopted
the popular opinions in regard to it. Originally there seems
to have been no outlet to the lake, but Agrippa opened a
passage to the Lucrine, and turned this " mouth of hell "
into a harbour for ships. The channel, however, appears
to have become obstructed at a later period. In the reign
of Nero it was proposed to construct a ship-canal from the
Tiber through Avernus to the Gulf of Baise, but the works
were hardly commenced. The plan of connecting the lake
with the Gulf of Baiaa was brought forward as late as
1858, but only to be abandoned. The Lago d Averno is
now greatly frequented by foreign tourists, who are shown
what pass for the Sibyl s Grotto, the Sibyl s Bath, and
the entrance to the infernal regions, as well as the tunnel
from Cumae, and ruins variously identified as belonging to
a temple or a batliing-p .ace.
AVERROES, known among his own people as Abul-
Walid Mohammed Ibn- Ahmed Ibn-Mohammed IBN-ROSHD,
the kadi, was born at Cordova in 1126, and died at Marocco
in 1198. 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 were a disastrous era for
Mahometan Spain, where almost every city had its own
petty king, whilst the Christian princes swept the land in
constant inroads. But with the advent of the Almohades,
the enthusiasm which ^the desert tribes had awakened,
whilst it revived religious life and intensified the observance
of the holy law within the realm, served at the same time
to reunite the forces of Andalusia, and inflicted decisive
defeats on the chiefs of the Christian North. For the last
time before its final extinction the Moslem caliphate in
Spain displayed a splendour which seemed to rival the
ancient glories of the Ommiade court. Great mosques
arose ; schools and colleges were founded ; hospitals, and
other useful and beneficent constructions, proceeded from
the public zeal of the sovereign; and under the patronage
of two liberal rulers, Jusuf and Jakub, science and
philosophy flourished apace. It was Ibn-Tofail (Abubacer),
the philosophic vizier of Jusuf, who introduced Averroes
to that prince, and Avenzoar (Ibn-Zohr), the greatest of
Moslem physicians, was his friend. Averroes, who was
versed in the Malekite system of law, was made kadi 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 Marocco, probably follow
ing the court of Jusuf Almansur, 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. Whether, as one story
ran, he had failed in conversation and in his writings to
pay the customary deference to the emir, or a court intrigue
had changed the policy of the moment, at any rate
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. Tales have
been told of the insults he had to suffer from a bigoted
populace. 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,
when the transient passion of the people had been satisfied,
and Averroes for a brief period survived his restoration to
honour. He died in the year before his patron Almansur,
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 Averroes s 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.
For Aristotle the reverence of Averroes was unbounded,
and to expound him was his chosen task. The uncritical
receptivity of his age, the defects of the Arabic versions,
the emphatic theism of his creed, and the rationalising
mysticism of some Oriental thought, may have sometimes
led him astray, and given prominence to the less obvious
features of Aristotelianism. But in his conception of the
relation between philosophy and religion, Averroes had a
light which the Latins were without. The science, falsely
so called, of the several theological schools, their groundless
distinctions and sophistical demonstrations, he regarded as
the great source of heresy and scepticism. The allegorical
interpretations and metaphysics which had been imported
into religion had taken men s minds away from the plain
sense of the Koran, and destroyed the force of those appeals
which had been spoken to the hearts and understandings
of our common humanity, not to the wisdom of the " people
of demonstration." God had declared a truth meet for all
men, which needed no intellectual superiority to understand,
in a tongue which each human soul could apprehend
according to its powers and feelings. Accordingly, the
expositors of religious metaphysics, Algazali included, are
the enemies of true religion, because they make it a mere
matter of syllogism. Averroes maintains that a return
must be made to the words and teaching of the prophet ;
that science must not expend itself in dogmatising on the
metaphysical consequences of fragments of doctrine for
