my
mistake."[36]

Who was Maimonides? The question is certainly more justifiable upon
German than upon French soil. In France, attention has been invited to
his works, while in Germany, save in the circle of the learned, he is
almost unknown. Even among Jews, who call him "Rambam," he is celebrated
rather than known. It seems, then, that it may not be unprofitable to
present an outline of the life and works of this philosopher of the
middle ages, whom scholars have sought to connect with Spinoza, with
Leibnitz, and even with Kant.[37]

While readers in general possess but little information about Maimonides
himself, the period in which he lived, and which derives much of its
brilliancy and importance from him, is well known, and has come to be a
favorite subject with modern writers. That period was a very dreamland
of culture. Under enlightened caliphs, the Arabs in Spain developed a
civilization which, during the whole of the middle ages up to the
Renaissance, exercised pregnant influence upon every department of human
knowledge. A dreamland, in truth, it appears to be, when we reflect that
the descendants of a highly cultured people, the teachers of Europe in
many sciences, are now wandering in African wilds, nomads, who know of
the glories of their past only through a confused legend, holding out to
them the extravagant hope that the banner of the Prophet may again wave
from the cathedral of Granada. Yet this Spanish-Arabic period bequeathed
to us such magnificent tokens of architectural skill, of scientific
research, and of philosophic thought, that far from regarding it as
fancy's dream, we know it to be one of the corner-stones of
civilization.

Prominent among the great men of this period was the Jew Moses ben
Maimon, or as he was called in Arabic, Abu Amran Musa ibn Maimun Obaid
Allah (1135-1204). It may be said that he represented the full measure
of the scientific attainments of the age at the close of which he
stood--an age whose culture comprised the whole circle of sciences then
known, and whose conscious goal was the reconciliation of religion and
philosophy. The sturdier the growth of the spirit of inquiry, the more
ardent became the longing to reach this goal, the keener became the
perception of the problems of life and faith. Arabic and Jewish thinkers
zealously sought the path leading to serenity. Though they never entered
upon it, their tentative efforts naturally prepared the way for a great
com