The dictator Sylla brought the works of the great Greek philosopher, together with his library, to Rome, in the year B.C. 147. This was on the capture of Athens, and these writings were still comparatively unknown in Greece. The philosophy of the Peripatetic school was, of course, familiar to their countrymen; but it was by and through the Latin race and not the Greek, that the “Master of Syllogisms” was to become most potent. Aristotle’s was the controlling system of the Middle Ages. His rules of logic were imperative. They governed theology, and indeed every other form of metaphysics. They restrained with an iron grip the expanding ideas of men. It was against Aristotle, in the person of William of Champeaux, future Bishop of Chalons and founder of the school of St. Victor, that Peter Abelard laid his lance in rest. Even to the days of Dean Swift these ideas bore sway, and when that brilliant man sought his degree from Trinity College, Dublin, he was met by the question whether he reasoned according to Aristotle. And his reply, that he did well enough in his own fashion, was held to be little less than atheism. Nor is this the only comparison which might be aptly instituted between Swift and Abelard. So Aristotle had his authority and held his sceptre down almost to our own time. But at the commencement his writings were either used in the Greek language or in the Arabic. In the twelfth century the schools of the Moors in Spain were the true centre of philosophy. They first applied his teachings to theology, and to these schools resorted many scholars from other parts of the continent. But such translations as these travelling students brought home were probably of a sort to make intricacy and subtlety more intricate and subtle. A fog had gathered over Europe, and the Dark Ages are indeed no myth. There were few points of light anywhere, and among these few were the bright spots called St. Gall and Reichenau.