3. What then does the Christian Philosophy of the Middle Ages owe to the Muslims? The answer to this question lies properly outside the scope of the present monograph. It is a special task, which necessitates the ransacking of many folios, none of which I have read. In general terms it may be affirmed that in the translations from the Arabic a twofold novelty was disclosed to the Christian West. In the first place men came to possess Aristotle, both in his Logic and in his Physics and Metaphysics, more completely than they had hitherto known him. But still this circumstance was only of passing importance, though stimulating for the moment, for erelong all his writings were translated much more accurately, direct from the Greek into Latin. The most important result, however, was—that from the writings of the Arabs, particularly of Ibn Roshd, a peculiar conception of the Aristotelian doctrines, as constituting the highest truth, came to the knowledge of men. This was bound to give occasion for contradiction, or for compromise, between theology and philosophy, or even for denial of the Church’s creed. Thus the influence of Muslim Philosophy upon the scholastic development of Church dogma was partly of a stimulating, partly of a disintegrating character; for, in the Christian world, philosophy and theology were not yet able to proceed side by side in an attitude of mutual indifference, as doubtless happened in the case of Muslim thinkers. Christian Dogmatic had adopted too much Greek Philosophy already in the first centuries of its development, to admit of such an attitude: it could even assimilate a little more. It was therefore relatively easier to get the better of the simple teachings of Islam than the complicated dogmas of Christianity. In the twelfth century, when the influence of the Arabs commenced to operate in that field, Christian Theology exhibited a Neo-Platonic, Augustinian character. That character continued to be kept up with the Franciscans, even in the thirteenth century. Now the Pythagorean-Platonic tendency, in Muslim thought, harmonized well with this. Ibn Gebirol (Avencebrol, v. VI, 1 § 2) was, for Duns Scotus, an authority of the first rank. On the other hand, the great Dominicans, Albert and Thomas, who decided the future of the doctrine of the Church, adopted a modified Aristotelianism, with which a good deal out of Farabi, but especially out of Ibn Sina and Maimonides, agreed quite well.