their rhetoric and mythological poetry); and were the only people that could then have accomplished it. To them we are indebted for the revival of natural, and for the rise of experimental philosophy. 38-It was the steady warfare which Mohammed and his followers waged against paganism in all its systems, mythologies, allegories, idolatries, mysteries, and later philosophical purifications and refinements, that led the Arabians to this great improvement in human knowledge, under the tuition of their masters, the Christian Syrians. 39 In the Macedonian establishments at Alexandria the foundations of this happy change were first laid, in the mathematical studies of the philosophers who were there settled and patronized. The mathematical studies are the scientific branch of natural philosophy. * Some great men of the Alexandrian school having peculiarly cultivated them, their works were introduced, by their Syrian teachers, to the Arabs, who immediately appreciated their value, with an extraordinary justness of taste and quickness of discernment; and devoted themselves to these sciences with an avidity and a success, which appropriated the treasures and enlarged the boundaries of all. They translated Euclid,

"Ancilla Scientiarum." Franc. Bacon. conf. Roger Bacon, Op. Maj. p. 57, &c. + See section xiii. of the present work.

Archimedes, Apollonius Pergæus, Eutochius, Diocles, Diophantus, Hippocrates, and Ptolemy. On these they commented and disserted with emulous ingenuity. The establishment of a separate Caliphate in Spain, and afterwards in Morocco, created new seats of knowledge near the western regions of Europe, where it was zealously cultivated." The well-known providential coincidence between the location of these last Arab schools, and the exigencies of the period in which they were erected, are next forcibly exhibited. "While Europe, in the tenth century, was slumbering in that intellectual torpidity, which followed the downfall of the Latin rhetorical literature, the Arabs were following with ardour those scientific pursuits, which were to give a new spirit of life and knowledge to the western world. Their mental fervour was made to glow peculiarly strong in that part of their dominions, Spain, which was best adapted for the improvement of Europe." Into Spain, accordingly, France, Germany, Italy, and England poured a succession of inquirers; who, attracted by the reputation of the Spanish Mahometans, "ventured to explore what riches they possessed, and imparted to Europe the treasures they obtained. England had its full share in producing these intellectual Columbuses;" whose pro

gressive intercourse with the Saracens of Spain and Asia, our author deduces downward, from the tenth century, through Gerbert (afterwards Pope Sylvester II.), Hermannus Contractus, Constantine Afer, Gerard of Cremona, Peter, Abbot of Clugny (the friend of St. Bernard), Hermannus Dalmatus, Robert Retinensis (an Englishman, and the first translator of the Koran), Athelard of Bath, William de Conchis, Daniel Morley, &c. in regular series, to the first introduction of the experimental philosophy into England, by the celebrated Roger Bacon. "It is in the compositions of Friar Bacon, who was born in 1214, and who learned the Oriental languages, that we discover the most extensive acquaintance with the Arabian authors. He quotes Albumazar, Averroës, Avicenna, Alpharabius, Thabet ebn Corah, Hali, Alhacen, Alkindi, Alfraganus, and Arzakel: and seems to have been as familiar with them as with the Greek and Latin classics, especially with Avicenna, whom he calls the chief and prince of philosophy.'"* From Roger Bacon, his great

namesake and emulator in the seventeenth century, it is well known, imbibed and borrowed the first principles of his famous experimental

* Turner's History of England during the Middle Ages, vol. iv. pp. 418. 431-443. second edit. London, 1825.

system*; a fact which indisputably establishes the derivation of the Baconian philosophy, from the descendants of Ishmael and disciples of Mahomet.

To speak, therefore, of Mahometanism, as a bar to the progress of science, and as uniformly occasioning a deep pause in philosophy 40," can serve only to injure the cause which such reasoning is brought to defend: Christianity leaning upon support like this, is like Judah resting upon the reed of Egypt. But Christianity requires no such broken props: it rests unmoved and immoveable upon its own intrinsic merits. To be unjust to the fair claims of any other system, is, in fact, to be guilty of gross injustice to the unrivalled merits of the Gospel. And they alone who are willing to do the fullest justice to Mahometanism, can expect to secure to Christianity its true and proper supremacy.

The permanent maintenance, by Mahometanism, of the doctrine of the divine unity, seems deservedly reckoned among the perplexing peculiarities of its history. Such, however, is the uncertainty of human opinion, that, to his uncompromising announcement of this very doc

* See section xiii.

ተ "Suis illa contenta est viribus, et veritatis propriæ fundaminibus nititur." Arnobius.

trine, Mahomet, according to some authorities, There is was mainly indebted for his success. * something inconsistent, if not irreconcileable, in these opposite judgments. All history and experience go unequivocally to prove the natural tendency of mankind to corrupt the doctrine of the unity; and to seek a refuge, from its abstract severity, in idolatrous superstition. 41 The difficulty arising from the perpetual preservation of this doctrine by the followers of Mahomet, is therefore real and undoubted. Yet so it is, as we have just observed, that to the adoption of a tenet thus denied and resisted by the universal and immemorial practice of mankind, we are taught by some grave authorities, to ascribe the ready and full reception which Mahomet procured for his religion. This, to say the best, is poor reasoning, for it runs counter to the whole tenor of experience and history: and it is worse philosophy, for it stands opposed to every known principle of the human mind. The power of the senses is the strongest and most active power in the nature of man. The universality and the force of its operation are notorious and proverbial. Hence it springs, that the interest of all objects presenting themselves to the popular choice, ordinarily depends on the degree in * White, Bampt. Lect. pp. 67, 68.