In the West, in Spain, the Arabs enjoyed the same advantages as regards contact with culture and education as their conquest of the Eastern cities and Alexandria brought them in the East. While it is not generally realized, Spain was, as we have pointed out, the province of the Roman Empire in the West that advanced most in culture before the breaking up of the Empire. The Silver Age of Latin literature owes all of its geniuses to Spain. Lucan, the Senecas, Martial, Quintilian, are all Spaniards. Spain itself was a most flourishing province, and under the Spanish Caesars, from the end of the first to about the end of the second century, increased rapidly in population. Spain was the leader in these prosperous times, and the tradition of culture maintained itself. When Spain became Christian the first great Christian poet, Prudentius, born about the middle of the fourth century, came from there. He has been called the Horace and Virgil of the Christians. The coming down of the barbarians from the North disturbed Spain's prosperity and the peace and culture of her inhabitants, but it should not be forgotten that the first medieval popularization of science, a sort of encyclopedia of knowledge, the first of its kind after that of Pliny in the classical period, came from St. Isidore of Seville, a Spanish bishop. There has been considerable tendency to insist that Spanish culture and intellectuality owe nearly all to the presence of the Moors in Spain. This can only be urged, however, by those who know nothing at all of the Spanish Caesars, the place of Spain in the history of the Roman Empire, and the continuance of the culture that then reached a climax of expression during succeeding centuries. On the contrary, the Moors who came to Spain owe most of their tendency to devote themselves to culture and education to the state of affairs existent in Spain when they came. There is no doubt that they raised standards of education and of culture above the level to which they had sunk under the weight of the invading barbarians from the North, and Spain owes much to the wise ruling and devotion to the intellectual life of her Moorish invaders. All the factors, however, must be taken together in order to appreciate properly the conditions which developed under the Arabs in both the East and the West. The Arabs invented little that was new in science or philosophy; they merely carried on older traditions. It is for that that the modern time owes them a great debt of gratitude. RHAZES