Nor is it Aristotle and Averrhoes alone that come within the pale of Albert’s erudition; the commentators and glossators of Aristotle, the whole circle of the Arabians, are quoted; their opinions, their reasonings, even their words, with the utmost familiarity. But with Albert Theology was still the master-science. The Bishop of Ratisbon was of unimpeached orthodoxy; the vulgar only, in his wonderful knowledge of the secrets of Nature, in his studies of Natural History, could not but see something of the magician. Albert had the ambition of reconciling Plato and Aristotle, and of reconciling this harmonized Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy with Christian Divinity. He thus, in some degree, misrepresented or misconceived both the Greeks; he hardened Plato into Aristotelism, expanded Aristotelism into Platonism; and his Christianity, though Albert was a devout man, while it constantly subordinates, in strong and fervent language, knowledge to faith and love, less a religion than a philosophy.” ↩