Like Plato of a poetical nature, Ibn-Gebirol borrowed the dialogue form of composition from the Greek philosopher. His system is developed in the course of a lively conversation between a master and his disciple. He thereby avoided the usual dryness of metaphysical studies, which makes them unenjoyable. He paid so little attention to Judaism in his system, that unless the reader knows that he was a sincere Jew, thoroughly devoted to his faith, he cannot discover it in his writings. The philosophy of Ibn-Gebirol, therefore, found little favor in Jewish circles, and exercised very little influence. Jewish thinkers found the tenor of his philosophy foreign to their own mode of thinking, and the form of demonstration too involved, the explanations too fitful, the method of presentation too lacking in system, and the whole not satisfying. Ibn-Gebirol's system aroused all the more attention among the Arabs and the Christian schoolmen. A century after its appearance, his chief work was translated into Latin by the combined labor of a Christian priest and a baptized Jew. Several prominent scholastic writers subscribed to the views of Ibn-Gebirol, whom they called Avicebrol or Avicebron. Others opposed them, but all considered them. In later times, the Kabbala borrowed some formulæ from him. Another Jewish philosopher of this time, which was so rich in great men, pursued a course different from Ibn-Gebirol's. He stood entirely upon Jewish ground, but he also introduced foreign elements into his system. Bachya (Bechaya) ben Joseph Ibn-Pakuda (Bakuda) was a model of earnest piety and altruistic morality. He established an entirely original moral theology of Judaism. Bachya was one of those natures whose energy of spirit and powerful moral force, if favored by the circumstances of the time, effect reformations. Of the details of the life of this moral philosopher absolutely nothing is known, not even the part of Spain in which he lived. We identify him wholly with his work, "Guide to the Duties of the Heart," which he wrote in Arabic. The sum and substance of its teachings is that nothing is of so much importance as that our conduct be ruled entirely by most serious religious convictions and godlike holiness of purpose. Biblical exegesis, grammar, poetry, speculative philosophy, all the pursuits with which the scholars of the age busied themselves are, according to Bachya, subordinate branches, hardly worthy of serious attention. The study of the Talmud even has no very great merit in his eyes. Bachya Ibn-Pakuda's aim was the spiritualization of Judaism. The duties which conscience demands are of infinitely greater importance to him than the ritual duties prescribed by the legal code. Like the Christian teachers of the first century, he distinguished in Judaism between the purely religious and moral injunctions and the ceremonial laws, attaching greater importance to the first than to the second.