conscious or unconscious pretence of knowledge
that obscures the real question at issue. A great thinker, who lived in
the century in which Maimonides died, Roger Bacon, set down as one of
the four principal obstacles to advance in knowledge indeed, as _the_
one of the four that hampered intellectual progress the most, the fact
that men feared to say, "I do not know."

One of the most interesting features of Maimonides' career for the
modern time is the influence that his writings exerted over the rising
intellectual life of Europe within a half century after his death. Most
people would be rather inclined to think that this Jewish author of the
East would have very little influence over the thinkers and teachers of
Europe within a generation after his death. He died in 1204, just at the
beginning of one of the great productive centuries of humanity, perhaps
one of the greatest of them all. In literature, in art, in architecture,
in philosophy, and in education, this century made wonderful strides.
Two of its greatest teachers, Albertus Magnus and his pupil, Thomas
Aquinas, quote from Moses AEgyptaeus, the European name for Maimonides at
that time, and evidently knew his writings very well. Maimonides was for
them an important connecting link with the world of old Greek thought.
Others of the writers and teachers of this time, as William of Auvergne,
and the two great Franciscans, Alexander of Hales and Duns Scotus, were
also influenced by Maimonides. In a word, the educational world of that
time was much more closely united than we might think, and it did not
take long for a great writer's thoughts to make themselves felt several
thousand miles away. Maimonides was, then, in his own time one of the
world teachers, and, in a certain sense, he must always remain that, as
representing a special development of what is best in human nature.

V

GREAT ARABIAN PHYSICIANS

In order to understand the place of the Arabs in medicine and in
science, a few words as to the rise of this people to political power,
and then to the cultivation of literature and of science, are necessary.
We hear of the Arabs as hireling soldiers fighting for others during the
centuries just after Christ, and especially in connection with the story
of the famous Queen Zenobia at Palmyra. After the destruction of this
city we hear nothing more of them until the time of Mohammed. During
these six and a half centuries there is little question of