Prophet. It offered a connection with the most promising cause then in the world; and not only at once conferred freedom, equality, and all the benefits of a strong-handed government, but opened paths to position, wealth, and honours.

Having thus won its way to empire by means not altogether though partly commendable, the influence of Mohammedanism on the world at large has been neither wholly good nor wholly evil. In some respects it has retarded, while in others it has signally advanced what is conveniently, if somewhat vaguely, termed civilization. There is nothing in the religion itself which is antagonistic to mental culture, although the instinct of self-preservation has produced a sensitive jealousy of anything like free thought in connection with its theology.

It has been the boast of Islam that it embraces sects representing every shade of opinion, and undoubtedly its creed gains both emphasis and comprehensiveness from its brevity. These sects, it is true, have more than once endeavoured to exterminate one another with the sword, and theologians who have shown the speculative tendencies of an Abelard or an Erigena, have been as liable to persecution in Islam as those philosophers were in Christendom. Averroes himself, by far the greatest of

Influence on Mental Culture.

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Arabic philosophers, was compelled to do penance for his errors by sitting in the mosque, while the worshippers were expected to testify to their own orthodoxy by spitting in his face, -a form of religious persecution which, as recent events have proved, is not yet obsolete in Islam. Commanders of the faithful, supreme in all besides, have been reminded that in this direction they were fettered. Mamoun, one of the most munificent patrons of learning,' was suspected of Zendikism; while Vathek spent a troubled reign because he denied the eternity of the Koran. At the same time, this narrowness and bigotry cannot be laid to the charge of the creed itself. The creed which is satisfied by a man's adherence to the one article of "God revealed by His prophets," if it does not bring the impulse and the light which might result from greater accuracy and detail, at least leaves the amplest scope for speculation. And the religion which assigned the martyr's crown to every soldier who fell in battle for the cause, and yet proclaimed that the "ink of the scholar was more precious than the blood of the martyr," can scarcely with justice be branded as obscurantist.2

I

Hottinger's Hist. Orientalis, p. 580.

2 The instructive pages of Gobineau on this subject will well repay perusal. Les Religions, &c., pp. 24-28.

It was only to be expected that the severe monotheism of the Saracens would brook no contamination with the profuse polytheism and licentious mythology of Greece and Rome. No accuracy of thought, no delicate finish of language, could compensate for the stain of error that blots the page of the classical writers. The colourless writings of Hippocrates, Galen, Euclid, and Aristotle, were freely translated and widely read; but even the liberal son of the splendid Harun Al Rashid, when he preferred to bring books instead of captives as his spoils from conquered Greece, left behind him in contempt the plays of Sophocles and Eschylus, the orations of Demosthenes, the histories of Thucydides and Herodotus-all in fact which would have opened a new world to the Eastern mind. If this was so in the golden age of Saracen history, we can scarcely discredit the story of Amru burning the Alexandrian library by order of the caliph. "If the books of the Greeks," said Omar, "agree with the Koran, they are superfluous; if they disagree, they are dangerous, and must be destroyed"—a saying which, if not uttered by Omar, is at least full of historical verisimilitude and significance.1

But, in the main, education up to a certain I Gibbon discredits the story; Von Hammer receives it.

Impulse given to Education.

III

point-literature in certain departments, and science in some of its branches-have been. materially promoted by the mental awakening produced by Islam. The Arabian mind had always shown itself lively and intelligent, and susceptible of culture, especially in an emotional and imaginative direction. The Koran gave an extraordinary impulse to this preexisting capability. It was better than an enactment of compulsory education, for it became the book of the people, and to be able to read was now an object of pious ambition. To recite the Koran was a work of merit. Alongside of the mosques, schools or colleges were built, or the work of instruction was carried on inside the sacred building itself. "To learn to read," they said, "is worth more than fasting; to teach it, is more meritorious than prayer."2 Mohammed himself used to

I

Dozy declares that the Arabs are "le peuple le moins inventif du monde" (Histoire, i. 12). Though idolaters, they had no mythology; and after they gave themselves to scientific pursuits, "ils ont montré la même absence de puissance créatrice. Ils ont traduit et commenté les ouvrages des anciens; ils ont enrichi certaines spécialités par des observations patientes, exactes, minutieuses; mais ils n'ont rien inventé, on ne leur doit aucune idée grande et féconde."

2

Oelsner, Des Effets, &c., p. 208, from whose admirable account of the learning of the Saracens many of the facts here stated are derived.

say, "Teach your children poetry; it opens the mind, lends grace to wisdom, and makes the heroic virtues hereditary." And, what was more to the purpose, when living in Medina. among a poorly educated population, he gave liberty to every Meccan prisoner who taught twelve boys of Medina the art of writing.1 And within a comparatively short time after Mohammed, there were crowded universities at Baghdad, Damascus, Alexandria, Bassora, and Samarkand; and probably at no period of the world's history was literature so richly rewarded as under some of the Abbasside princes. The victor at the poetic contests received 100 pieces of gold, a horse, an embroidered caftan, and a lovely slave; and, apparently in one gift, Abu Taman received from his sovereign 50,000 pieces of gold. But it was not in pure literature that the work of the Saracens was of greatest service to the world, but rather in the departments of medicine, philosophy, and the mathematical sciences. In medicine their work has never been adequately appraised, because barely three European students have carefully studied their medical books. But their influence on the study of chemistry, algebra, and astronomy, is visible in the very terminology of these sciences.