The ideas which he imbibed in the course of his education appear to be a sort of continuation or development of those of Erasmus. There is a striking resemblance between the views of Busbecq and those of his contemporary, Pierre de la Ramée. These views and theories consisted in making the results achieved by the ancients a new point of departure for the learning of modern times.[62] In medicine, for instance, the works of Galen and Hippocrates were to be taken for the foundation, and all later writers ignored; on this substratum the medical science of the future was to be built. That these ideas rested on a sound basis there can be no doubt. Immense results, in almost every field of human knowledge, had been achieved during the palmy days of Greece and Rome; with the downfall of the latter a flood of barbarism had poured over the civilised world. The human race had been struggling again towards the light, but struggling with slow and feeble step. In Busbecq’s days they had not nearly reached the point where Greece and Rome left off. Compare, for instance, the writings of Philippe de Comines, one of the ablest men of his time, with those of Busbecq sixty years later. The former are stamped with the ideas of the middle ages, the latter are bright with the freshness of a modern writer. The difference is simply enormous, and it is to be attributed to the fact that Philippe de Comines, who was fully conscious of his loss, was ignorant of Latin, while Busbecq had kept company, as it were, with the brightest wits and most learned men of ancient times. But it must not be supposed that the men of Ramée’s school had any idea of contenting themselves with the knowledge of the ancients; on the contrary, they made it the starting-point for the prosecution of further discoveries. Busbecq’s letters furnish us with an excellent instance of the practice of these ideas. With Pliny, Galen, Vopiscus at his fingers’ ends, he is ever seeking to verify, correct, or enlarge the store he has received. For him all knowledge is gain, and he seeks it in every quarter; inscriptions, coins, manuscripts; birds, beasts, and flowers; the homes, customs, and languages of mankind; the secrets of earth, air, and water—all alike are subjects of interest to him. One trait marks the man. On his journeys he made it a rule, as soon as he reached his halting-place for the night, to sally forth in search of some discovery. Occasionally an inscription, or some of his favourite coins, was the result; at other times it would be a strange plant, or even a quaint story; but whatever it was, it was duly garnered.