I long for thee; though indeed thy kings
Have passed forever; what though where once uprose
Sweet balsam trees, the serpent makes his nest;
Oh! that I might embrace thy dust, the sod
Were sweet as honey to my fond desire."
CHAPTER. XIII.
IN PHILOSOPHY.
ALEXANDRIA, THE INTELLECTUAL METROPOLIS OF THE WORLD.—A PRODIGIOUS STIMULUS GIVEN TO LEARNING.—THE SEPTUAGINT.—DEVELOPMENT OF GRECIAN PHILOSOPHY INTO ARISTOTLIANISM.—THIS ENGRAFTED ON JEWISH THEOLOGY.—OPPOSITION OF CHRISTIANITY TO ARISTOTLIANISM.—AVERROES.—MOSES MAIMONIDES.—OPPOSITION UNSUCCESSFUL.
We must devote some little space and time to a review of the place the Moors and the Jews held in philosophy during their stay in Spain from the eighth to the fifteenth century. The purpose of this work makes this review necessary. Not that we shall see any wonderful advance in this department of learning, nor that we need show the glaring contrast between the sophistical cobwebs of the cotemporaneous scholastics and the rational researches of the Moorish and Jewish philosophers, but that we may see what a debt of gratitude modern philosophy owes the Jew and Moor, for taking up the thread of philosophical research where Greek intelligence had been forced to leave it, and for carrying it forward sufficiently for modern philosophy to build upon it, as a superstructure, the theories and systems of to-day.