In the light of wanderings in philosophy during the centuries since, it is rather interesting to quote from that work the end of man as this Jewish philosopher of the middle of the twelfth century saw it. Recent teleological tendencies in biology add to the interest of his views. According to Maimonides, "Man is the end of the whole creation, and we have only to look to him for the reason for its existence. Every object shows the end for which it was created. The palm-trees are there to provide dates; the spider to spin her webs. All the properties of an animal or a plant are directed so as to enable it to reach its purpose in life. What is the purpose of man? It cannot lie alone in eating and drinking or yielding to passion, nor in the building of cities and the ruling of others, since these objects lie outside of him, and do not touch his essential being. Such material striving he has in common with the animal. A man is lifted from a lower to a higher condition by his reason. Only through his reason is he placed above the animals. He is the only reasonable animal. His reason enables him to understand all things, especially the Unity of God, and all knowledge and science serve only to direct man to the knowledge of God. Passions are to be subdued, since the man who yields to passion subjects his spirit to his body, and does not reveal in himself the divine power which in him lies in his reason, but is swallowed up in the ocean of matter." Not long after Maimonides passed his twentieth year the family, consisting of the father and his two sons, Moses and David, and a daughter, moved from Cordova to Fez, compelled by Jewish persecutions. Here it is said that they had to submit to wearing the mask of Islam in order to lead a peaceful existence. This has been doubted, however, and his whole life is in flagrant contradiction with any such even apparent apostasy from the faith of his fathers. Father and son took advantage of the opportunity of intercourse with Moorish physicians and philosophers to increase their store of knowledge, but could not be content in the political and religious conditions in which they were compelled to live. About 1155, then, they went to Jerusalem, but found conditions even more intolerable there, and turned back to Egypt, where they settled down in Old Cairo. In 1166 the father died, and after this we learn that the sons made a livelihood, and even laid the foundation of a fortune, by carrying on a jewelry trade. Moses still devoted most of his time to study, while his brother did most of the business, but the brother was lost in the Indian Ocean, and with him went not only a large sum of his own money, but also much that had been entrusted to him by others. Maimonides undertook to pay off these debts and at the same time had to meet the necessities not only of himself and sister, but also of the family of his dead brother. It was then that he took up the practice of