the reverse process must be
outlined. In either case it was the heir to the late classical age, to
the mixed Graeco-Oriental culture, which influenced Islam at first in
Christian guise. Islam is often able to supplement its borrowings from
Christianity at the original sources, and when they have thus been
deepened and purified, these adaptations are returned to Christianity
in Muhammedan form.

Christian scholasticism was first based upon fragments of Aristotle
and chiefly inspired by Neo-Platonism: through the Arabs it became
acquainted with almost the whole of Aristotle and also with the
special methods by which the Arabs approach the problem of this
philosophy. To give any detailed account of this influence would be to
write a history of mediaeval philosophy in its relation to
ecclesiastical doctrine, a task which I feel to be beyond my powers. I
shall therefore confine myself to an abstract of the material points
selected from the considerable detail which specialists upon the
subject have collected: I consider that Arab influence during the
first period is best explained by the new wealth of Greek thought
which the Arabs appropriated and transmitted to Europe. These new
discoveries were the attainments of Greece in the natural sciences and
in logic: they extended the scope of dialectic and stimulated the rise
of metaphysical theory: the latter, in combination with ecclesiastical
dogma and Greek science, became such a system of thought as that
expounded in the Summa of Thomas Aquinas. Philosophy remained the
handmaid of religion and Arab influence first served only to complete
the ecclesiastical philosophy of life.

Eventually, however, the methods of interpretation and criticism,
peculiar to the Arabs when dealing with Aristotle became of no less
importance than the subject matter of their inquiries. This form of
criticism was developed from the emphasis which Islam had long laid
upon the value of wisdom, or recognition of the claims of reason.
Muhammedan tradition is full of the praises of wisdom, which it also
originally regarded as the basis of religion. Reason, however,
gradually became an independent power: orthodoxy did not reject reason
when it coincided with tradition, but under the influence of
Aristotelianism, especially as developed by Averroes, reason became a
power opposed to faith. The essential point of the doctrine was that
truth was twofold, according to faith and according to reason. Any one
wh