Assuming then the literal truth of this interesting colophon, we are confirmed in the conclusion to which an examination of the _De Partibus Animalium_ in the Florence manuscript has already inclined our minds.[191] Michael Scot, it must now be held, did not confine his studies altogether to the Arabian authors, but undertook to form translations directly from the Greek. These two versions, and especially that of the _Nova Ethica_, open up a new and striking view of the scholar’s literary activity. When Aquinas moved Pope Urban to order a new translation of Aristotle from the original, William of Moerbeka and those others who presently entered upon this work were tilling no virgin soil, but a familiar field in which the plough of Scot at least had left deep furrows. Even the renowned Grostête, Bishop of Lincoln, who executed a version of the _Ethica_ from the Greek about 1250, was but following in the path which this earlier master had opened up. Michael Scot here takes rank with Boëthius and Jacobus de Venetiis, who were among the first to seek these pure and original sources of Aristotelic doctrine. He appears as one who not only completed the knowledge of his time with regard to the Arabian philosophy by translating Averroës, but who gave some help at least to lay the foundation of a more exact acquaintance with the works of Aristotle by opening a direct way to the Greek text. We may even see a sign of this remarkable position in the place of honour given, perhaps accidentally, to Scot’s version of the _Nova Ethica_ at the opening of the St. Omer manuscript. He stands between two ages, and lays a hand of power upon each.