st. john of damascus (676-749 - Cristo Raul

"
On
THE "FONS SCIENTLE."
67
the sixty-eight short chapters or sections, into which
the work is divided. The nature of some of them
entity,
"
genus,"
On species,"
predications," &c. It is, in fact, in the main, a
may be gathered from the headings : "
On
substance, and accident,"
"
On
summary of the "
Categories, together with the
Isagoge,"
or introduction to them, of Porphyry.
It would be impossible to make any detailed
account of such a subject interesting to the readers
for whom this little work is designed. But it
any rate, instructive to note, that we have here a
Greek Christian of Palestine, in the eighth century,
expounding one of the treatises of the Organon, and
applying
its methods to Christian doctrine. Boethius,
in the fifth century, had translated into Latin all the
is,
at
treatises of which Aristotle s great work consists ;
but of these the "Analytics,"
the "Topics,"
and the
"Elenchi Sophistici," seem to have lain in oblivion
until the beginning of the twelfth century. The
"Categories"
and the "De
Interpretatione,"
were
practically the whole of Aristotle known in Europe
during that long interval. If, then, we see John of
Damascus familiar with one of these in the year 743,
and making its method and application known by
his "Dialectic," it should raise our opinion of the
importance of his work in the history of philo
sophical inquiry. There has long been a tendency
to overrate the services rendered by the Arabians
to art and literature. The imagination
is
apt to
be dazzled by the glories of Bagdad and Cordova ;
by stories of Al-Mansour and Haroun-al-Raschid.
But John of Damascus wrote before Bagdad was
F 2