In the classification and description of the sciences which make up the bulk of the _De divisione philosophiae_ Gundissalinus gives a certain place to the occult arts. At the beginning of the book, it is true, the magic arts are not classed among useful things of the spirit like the virtues and true sciences (_honestae scientiae_). Neither, however, are they grouped with pride, avarice, and vain glory as harmful vices, but are merely classed along with worldly honors as vanities.[206] “Nigromancy according to physics,” however, is later listed as one of eight sub-divisions of natural science together with alchemy, medicine, agriculture, navigation, the science of mirrors, and the sciences of images and of judgments.[207] Gundissalinus was innocent, however, of any detailed knowledge of necromancy or indeed of any of the other sub-divisions except medicine. He explains that he has not yet advanced as far as these subjects in his studies.[208] He is manifestly simply copying an Arabic classification, probably from Al-Farabi’s _De ortu scientiarum_, and one of which we find similar traces in other medieval Christian authors.[209] [Sidenote: Al-Farabi _De ortu scientiarum_.] This little treatise on _The Rise of the Sciences_ by Al-Farabi, although it occupies only a leaf or two in the manuscripts and has only recently been printed,[210] is a rather important one to note, as other of its statements than its eight sub-divisions of natural science seem to be paralleled in medieval Latin writers. There seems, for instance, a resemblance between its attitude towards the sciences and classification of them and that of Roger Bacon in the _Opus Maius_.[211] Al-Farabi believes in God the Creator, as his opening words show, and he regards “divine science” as the end and perfection of the other sciences; “and beyond it investigation does not go, for it is itself the goal to which all inquiry tends.”[212] At the same time Al-Farabi emphasizes the importance of natural science, adding its eight parts to the four divisions of the _quadrivium_--arithmetic, geometry, astrology, and music, and saying, “Moreover, this last (i. e. natural) science is greater and broader than any of those sciences and disciplines (or, than any of those disciplinary sciences).” We need a science, he says in effect, which deals inclusively with changes in nature, showing how they are brought about and their causes and enabling us to repel their harmful action when we wish or to augment them,--a science of action and passion.[213] This suggestion of applied science and of a connection between it and magic also reminds one of Roger Bacon, as does Al-Farabi’s statement later that the beginning of all sciences is the science of language. [Sidenote: Gundissalinus on astrology.]