"How shall I forsake wisdom? I have made a covenant with her. She is my mother, I her dearest child; She hath clasped her jewel about my neck. Shall I cast aside the glorious ornament? While life is mine, my spirit shall aspire Unto her heavenly heights. I will not rest until I find her source." As Ibn-Gebirol, whilst yet a child, created the most difficult artistic forms of Hebrew poetry, and handled them with sportive ease; so while still a youth, he built up a system attempting to solve the deepest problems which concern the human understanding. What is the highest aim of man? What is the nature and origin of the soul, and whither does it go when it leaves its earthly dwelling? How is the highest Being to be conceived, and how did He, being One and perfect, bring forth the manifold, corrupt and defective things of a visible world? These and many other questions Ibn-Gebirol attempted to answer, to satisfy not the believing heart, but the critical human mind, to show it its true place in the universe, to direct its attention to the invisible spirit-world above, and to the world of matter beneath, and induce it to seek the link binding them together. In the exposition of his system Ibn-Gebirol reveals a superabundant wealth of ideas, and a depth of subtle thought, so that the thinker must concentrate all his attention in order to be able to follow out his reasoning. To him, however, these extremely complicated thoughts, encircling the whole world from its very origin, and the whole range of beings down to lifeless stone, were so comprehensible that for everything he found the most fitting word and the most suitable image. Indeed, one portion of these thoughts he poured forth in a poem in the form of a prayer (Kether Malchuth), which for sublimity, elevated tone, and truth has no equal. It is true that the leading ideas of Ibn-Gebirol's system had been expressed by earlier philosophers, but he formed into one organic whole a confused mass of scattered thoughts. He developed his system in a work entitled, "The Fountain of Life" (Mekor Chayim, Fons Vitæ), written in Arabic, which he handled with as much ease as Hebrew. A Christian emperor destroyed the temple of philosophy in Athens, and exiled its last priests. Since that time philosophy had been outlawed in Europe; at least, it was little known there, and had been compelled to find a home in Asia. The Jewish thinker, Ibn-Gebirol, was the first to transplant it again to Europe, and he built an altar to it in Spain, where it found a permanent habitation.