should contradict the Torah in the strongest possible manner. The Torah is no tyrannical law, which desires to force one to accept untruth as truth, on the contrary, it seeks to lead man to a true understanding of things. If the truth arrived at by investigation is in harmony with the utterances of the Bible, then so much the better. In his independence of thought, the only parallel to Gersonides among Jewish inquirers is Spinoza. Unlike many of his predecessors, he would not look upon science as a body of occult doctrines designed for an inner circle of the initiated. He moreover refused to follow slavishly the authorities in philosophy regarded as infallible. He propounded independent views in opposition not only to Maimuni and Averroes, but also to Aristotle. Leon de Bagnols did not establish a perfect and thoroughly organized system of the philosophy of religion, but treated of the difficulties which interested the thinkers of the age more incisively than any of his predecessors. In spite of his great ability, Gersonides exercised very little influence upon Judaism. By the pious, he was denounced as a heretic, because of his independent research, and his ambiguous attitude towards the doctrine of the creation. They took the title of his chief work, "The Battles of the Lord," to mean "Battles against the Lord." So much the warmer was his reception by Christian inquirers after truth. Pope Clement VI, during the lifetime of the author, commanded his treatise upon astronomy and the newly-invented instrument to be translated into Latin (1342).