clopedic. He was the most prolific of Jewish writers. He explored
almost all knowledge and mastered nearly every science known to
his age. He gave to the world not one magnum opus but several. His
scholarship encompassed the Bible and the Talmud, mathematics,
astronomy, jurisprudence, ethics, philosophy, and medicine; and in
everything to which he gave his mind he attained outstanding results.
He intruded himself into posterity. Today, more than seven hundred
and fifty years after his death, his achievements in Jewish thought
and learning are still a vital force in the scholarly life of thousands
of Jews.

His appeal is universal. The only Jewish scholar whose prestige
and influence extend far beyond the confines of his own people,
Christian and Moslem theologians recognized--and disputed with--
him. It is impossible to read the works of the medieval schoolmen
without finding approval or disagreement with Maimonides' teach-
ings dominating their pages. He had the merit--a merit he shared
with the greatest of his age--of imposing his convictions. He fought
against resistance; he battled against ignorance, bigotry, and super-
stition. The kindest and most humble of men, his personality was
combative and aggressive. He excited violent animosity; he was the
victim of calumny and misrepresentation, but there was a quality in
him which could not be ignored or set aside. He never suffered final
defeat.

Although he is among the most contemporary of Jewish scholars,
much of his philosophy is outdated. His theology was bitterly fought
against during his own lifetime. The perplexities which the "Doctor
Perplexorum" had set out to resolve have since been increased and
multiplied by perplexities he could not have foreseen. But the ideal
for which he stood and the challenge which rings forth from his
pages are still alive and new. He believed in science and education,
in freedom of thought and utterance, in the acquisition of correct
ideas and ideals rather than the acquisition of wealth and the material
things of life. He was tolerant in an age that was seething with in-
tolerance. He set a good part of the Jewish world ablaze against him
by holding a pagan philosopher a little lower than the Prophets. A
deeply pious Jew who believed in the divine origin of the Torah and
carried out punctiliously all its laws and precepts, he was neverthe-
less tolerant of other faiths, and he recognized Christianity and
Mohammedanism as stepping-stones to the true worship of God.

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