The philosophy of Ibn Gabirol is a compound of Hebrew monotheism and that Neo-Platonic Aristotelianism which for two hundred years had been current in the Muslim schools at Bagdad, Basra, etc., and which the learned Jews were largely instrumental in carrying to the Muslims of Spain. For it must never be forgotten that the great translators and intellectual purveyors of the Middle Ages were the Jews. (See Steinschneider, 'Die Hebräischen Uebersetzungen des Mittelalters, und die Juden als Dolmetscher,' 2 vols., Berlin, 1893.) The aim of Ibn Gabirol, like that of the other three noted Hebrew thinkers, Philo, Maimonides, and Spinoza, was--given God, to account for creation; and this he tried to do by means of Neo-Platonic Aristotelianism, such as he found in the Pseudo-Pythagoras, Pseudo-Empedocles, Pseudo-Aristotelian 'Theology' (an abstract from Plotinus), and 'Book on Causes' (an abstract from Proclus's 'Institutio Theologica'). It is well known that Aristotle, who made God a "thinking of thinking," and placed matter, as something eternal, over against him, never succeeded in bringing God into effective connection with the world (see K. Elser, 'Die Lehredes Aristotles über das Wirken Gottes,' Münster, 1893); and this defect the Greeks never afterward remedied until the time of Plotinus, who, without propounding a doctrine of emanation, arranged the universe as a hierarchy of existence, beginning with the Good, and descending through correlated Being and Intelligence, to Soul or Life, which produces Nature with all its multiplicity, and so stands on "the horizon" between undivided and divided being. In the famous encyclopaedia of the "Brothers of Purity," written in the East about A.D. 1000, and representing Muslim thought at its best, the hierarchy takes this form: God, Intelligence, Soul, Primal Matter, Secondary Matter, World, Nature, the Elements, Material Things. (See Dieterici, 'Die Philosophic der Araber im X. Jahrhundert n. Chr.,' 2 vols., Leipzig, 1876-79.) In the hands of Ibn Gabirol, this is transformed thus: God, Will, Primal Matter, Form, Intelligence, Soul--vegetable, animal, rational, Nature, the source of the visible world. If we compare these hierarchies, we shall see that Ibn Gabirol makes two very important changes: _first_, he introduces an altogether new element, viz., the Will; _second_, instead of placing Intelligence second in rank, next to God, he puts Will, Matter, and Form before it. Thus, whereas the earliest thinkers, drawing on Aristotle, had sought for an explanation of the world in Intelligence, he seeks for it in Will, thus approaching the standpoint of Schopenhauer. Moreover, whereas they had made Matter and Form originate in Intelligence, he includes the latter, together with the material world, among things compounded of Matter and Form. Hence, everything, save God and His Will, which is but the expression of Him, is compounded of Matter and Form (cf. Dante, 'Paradiso,' i. 104 _seq_.).