In the little intercourse subsisting, at this period, between distant nations and lands, and the almost total separation of the East from the West, it was only through the Arabic versions, or Latin translations molded again upon these, that any knowledge of this philosophy could be drawn. This must have led, it is obvious, to a wide deviation from the true sense and critical spirit of the author. Its original aim must have been generally missed. For, however highly we may be disposed to estimate the intellectual merits of the Arabians, as writers of their native history, or in poetry, or in any other science, they are notoriously deficient in the true critical spirit. Their total and universal want, in this respect, is especially evident when they are compared with the Greeks, among whom this critical acuteness, whether false or true, sprung up and reached its greatest height. Strange, no doubt, and singular is it at first sight, to view this old master of philosophical thought and science, who, on the whole, is so perfectly heathen, suddenly received among the medieval theologians, and taking, as it were, his seat, and giving his voice among them. Still, if men of great mental powers and authority sought to make themselves masters of the whole matter--both of the much-disputed works of this writer, this Aristotle, so strangely disguised in his new motley dress of Arabic Latin, and also of the voluminous labors bestowed upon him--we must look upon this procedure as analogous to that of the thoughtful physician, who, in the midst of a wide-spread pestilence and inevitable contagion, prefers to inoculate it himself, in order the more safely to treat and to cure it. In short, as the case really stands, we must look on these illustrious men in two distinct lights. On the one hand we must see in them the Church’s venerable teachers, and the sagacious and discriminating theologians of the day; on the other, the scholastic interpreters of Aristotle, who had now become a necessary evil for the Christian middle ages.