ill, he does not consider Aristotle other than a thinker like himself,
not by any means the infallible "organ of reason." The moment he
discovers that a peripatetic principle is in direct and irreconcilable
conflict with his religious convictions, he parts company with it, let
the effort cost what it may. For, above all, Maimonides was a faithful
Jew, striving to reach a spiritual conception of his religion, and to
assign to theology the place in his estimation belonging to it in the
realm of science. He stands forth as the most eminent intermediary
between Greek-Arabic thought and Christian scholasticism. A century
later, the most prominent of the schoolmen endeavored, in the same way
as Maimonides, to reconcile divine with human wisdom as manifested by
Aristotle. It has been demonstrated that Maimonides was followed by both
Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, and that the new aims of philosophy,
conceived at the beginning of the thirteenth century, are, in part, to
be traced to the influence of "Rabbi Moses of Egypt," as Maimonides was
called by the first of these two celebrated doctors of the Church.

What a marvellous picture is presented by the unfolding of the
Aristotelian idea in its passage through the ages! And one of the most
attractive figures on the canvas is Maimonides. Let us see how he
undertakes to guide the perplexed. His path is marked out for him by the
Bible. Its first few verses suffice to puzzle the believing thinker. It
says: "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness." What! Is this
expression to be taken literally? Impossible! To conceive of God as such
that a being can be made in His image, is to conceive of Him as a
corporeal substance. But God is an invisible, immaterial Intelligence.
Reason teaches this, and the sacred Book itself prohibits image-worship.
On this point Aristotle and the Bible are in accord. The inference is
that in the Holy Scriptures there are many metaphors and words with a
double or allegoric sense. Such is the case with the word "image." It
has two meanings, the one usual and obvious, the other figurative. Here
the word must be taken in its figurative sense. God is conceived as the
highest Reason, and as reason is the specific attribute which
characterizes the human mind, it follows that man, by virtue of his
possession of reason, resembles God, and the more fully he realizes the
ideal of Reason, the closer does he approach the form and likeness of
God. Such is Mai