It is plain, then, that Isidore used the dictionary method in the _Etymologies_ not as a matter of convenience, but on philosophic grounds. His unthinking confidence in words was, however, ill-rewarded. It merely furnished a plan of treatment which evaded consecutive thought, and made it possible for his work to be a mass of contradictions, as it really is in very many points. Indeed, the task of combining in one work the ill-digested ideas of the school of Christian thought of his day and conflicting ideas borrowed from the pagans would not have been possible except to a writer who did not reason on his material, but was satisfied, as was Isidore, to give the derivation and meaning of his terms in the blind trust that a harmonious whole was thus constituted. We have some information in regard to the production of the _Etymologies_.[41] It was a work undertaken at the request of Braulio, bishop of Saragossa, and it occupied the last years of Isidore’s life. Parts of it, however—presumably those that could be used as text-books—were in circulation before his death. Braulio is our authority for the statement that the work as a whole was left unfinished, and that he himself divided it into twenty books, Isidore having made no division except that by subjects. As the brief preface, addressed to Braulio, informs us, the work was the product of long-continued reading, and contained verbatim extracts from previous writers, as well as Isidore’s own comments. [41] The circumstances under which the _Etymologies_ was written are referred to in Braulio’s _Introduction_ and in the life of Isidore by Ildephonsus (both in Migne, _P. L._ 82, col. 65–68); in the correspondence between Braulio and Isidore (Migne, _P. L._ 83, col. 910–914); and in the preface of the _Etymologies_. CHAPTER II ISIDORE’S RELATION TO PREVIOUS CULTURE It has been shown that by a combination of circumstances, geographical, political, and religious, Spain in Isidore’s day was more fortunately situated than the remainder of western Europe. Conditions there were ripe for an expansion of intellectual interest beyond the narrow bounds to which the growth of religious prejudice and the uncertainties of life had reduced it. In this expansion, in which it was Isidore’s part to lead, it was inevitable that the chief element should be an attempt to re-appropriate what had been lost in the preceding centuries, and to adapt it in some measure to the changed conditions of life and thought which had arisen.