All his predecessors he joys in correcting, but his especial _bête noire_ is al-Ghazzali. With him it is war on life or death. He has two good causes. One is al-Ghazzali’s “Destruction of the Philosophers;” of it, Ibn Rushd, in his turn, writes a “Destruction.” This is a clever, incisive criticism, luminous with logical exactitude, yet missing al-Ghazzali’s vital earnestness and incapable of reaching his originality. But al-Ghazzali had not only attacked the philosophers; he had also spread the knowledge of their teachings and reasonings, and had said that there was nothing esoteric and impossible of grasp in them for the ordinary mind. He had thus assailed the fundamental principles of the Muwahhid system. Against this, Ibn Rushd wrote the tractates spoken of above. They were evidently addressed to the educated laity; not to the ignorant multitude, but to those who had already read such books as those of al-Ghazzali and been affected by them, yet had not studied philosophy at first hand. That they were not intended for such special students is evident from the elaborate care that is taken in them to conceal, or, if that were not possible, to put a good face upon obnoxious doctrines. Thus, his philosophy left no place in reality for a system of rewards and punishments or even for any individual existence of the soul after death, for a creation of the material world, or for a providence in the direct working of the supreme being on earth. But all these points are involved or glossed over in these tractates. Further, it is plain that their object was to bring about a reform of religion in itself, and also of the attitude of theologians to students of philosophy. In them he sums up his own position under four heads: _First_, that philosophy agrees with religion and that religion recommends philosophy. Here, he is fighting for his life. Religion is true, a revelation from God; and philosophy is true, the results reached by the human mind; these two truths cannot contradict each other. Again, men are frequently exhorted in the Qur’an to reflect, to consider, to speculate about things; that means the use of the intelligence, which follows certain laws, long ago traced and worked out by the ancients. We must, therefore, study their works and proceed further on the same course ourselves, _i.e._, we must study philosophy. _Second_, there are two things in religion, literal meaning and interpretation. If we find anything in the Qur’an which seems externally to contradict the results of philosophy, we may be quite sure that there is something under the surface. We must look for some possible interpretation of the passage, some inner meaning; and we shall certainly find it. [Sidenote: THE MULTIFORM TRUTH]