The fundamental textbooks are Donatus's grammar for instruction in Latin, and then for almost everything savoring of real learning, Latin translations of Master Aristotle. For a long time the monks have had to content themselves with the logical Works of the famous Grecian, explaining the processes of argumentation, but by 1200 they can enjoy the enormous advantage of using Latin versions of the Physics, the Metaphysics, and the Ethics--the great works of The Master of Those Who Know (to quote Dante, writing eighty years later). Some of these books have come directly from the Greek, but others have been distorted by passing through an Arabic version that in turn has been made over into Latin. There are also various Arabic commentaries of considerable value. Curious it doubtless is that Heaven, who has denied salvation alike to Greek and to Moslem, should suffer unbelievers to possess a worldly wisdom surpassing that of good Christians, but the Bible truly says, "The children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." On all secular matters, indeed, Aristotle is a final authority. "Thus says Aristotle" is the best way to silence every hostile argument. Only very rarely can a man hope by his own cogitations to overthrow the dicta of this wonderful sage of Athens. A great deal of the monkish student's time is taken up with abstract problems of philology and logic. Nevertheless, the abbey contains many parchments widening to one's knowledge of the world. For example, you can read in Vincent de Beauvais's _Mirror of Nature_ a minute account of the universe and all things within it. You can learn the astonishing fact that the world is a kind of globe suspended at the center of the cosmos. Many other wonderful things are described--as, for example, lead can be transmuted into gold, and all kinds of wonders which defy ordinary experience, but which are not to be doubted, since God can, of course, do anything. Or one can turn to Hugues de St. Victor's treatise _On Beasts and Other Things_ and learn all about the habits of animals--concerning how stags can live nine hundred years and how the dove "with her right eye contemplates herself, and with her left eye God." There are books also on medicine, parts of which contain sober wisdom, worthy of attention by the murderous physicians, but elsewhere giving such directions as that since autumn is "the melancholy season," people should then eat more heartily than in summer and should refrain from love affairs.