ORIENTAL ELEMENTS OF CULTURE IN THE OCCIDENT. 519 



tlio antique culture !?phero, and each theory had adherents. Thus, 

 according to Prouhetj-wjioiii C. Henry still praises" for his "inoe- 

 nious" idea, we must believe that our X was the Roman sign for 1,000, 

 viz, oo( = CIO), for one says: "He eats for 4," etc. One would 

 expect that mathematicians, and especially arithmeticians, would ])e a 

 little more precise in handling numbers and not write 1,000 for any 

 other number. Lagarde, as is well known, has proven'^ that the X of 

 the mathematicians is an ab])reviation of the Arabic word shei, '^a 

 thing," "something.''' which as early as the eleventh century was used 

 to designate the uidciiown, and wliich in the then prevailing Western 

 transcription was rendered by xei and still appears in this form in 

 Pedro de Alcala. 



We have thus seen that two of the most important foundations of 

 our culture, the alphabet and the ciphers, were gifts of the East. In 

 order to obtain a more definite judgment of the share of the Orient 

 and Occident in civilizing humanity, let us now turn to those discov- 

 eries and iiuentions which have contributed most to the mighty mental 

 progress of the last centuries. 



We begin to outgrow the ideals of so-called Humanism. Our age 

 is in transition from classicism to universalism. Mental achievements 

 are never formed ivoni cloud mists, but need a concrete l)asis. The 

 broad foundation of our modern world view is the result of familiarit}" 

 with the spirit of foreign civilizations, and these could enter into our 

 horizon only after the invention of the compass, which made naviga- 

 tion on the ocean possible. The magnet needle was known to the 

 Chinese even in the ])egimiing of Ihe second century A. D., the most 

 important evidence of this fact being given in Klaproth's famous let- 

 ter to Alexander von Humboldt. Sur Tinvention de la bussole,'' Ibn 

 '"Adhari quotes an Arabic verse of 85-1 A. D., in which the qaramit 

 ( = calamita) is mentioned in a connection which would imply its refer- 

 ring to the ship's compass.'' 



The work of civilization needs periods of peace. These we owe to 

 the improvement of our military ati'airs, which have made war more 

 terrible, but also less frecpient. This, again, was made possible only 



'< Revue archoologiqne, Nouvelle Serie, vol. 38, p. 5. 



''Wolier staniint das X der ]Matheinatiker: ]\Iittlieilun<j;en, Gr)ttin<j;en, 1SS4, vol. 

 I., pp. 134-137. 



'Paris, 1834 (al^breviated in CTerinan by A. Wittsstein, Leipzig, 1885). 



"'Coni]). Al-Bajaiiu' 1-inughrib, ed. Dozy, Leiden, 1849-1851, vol. ii, j). 97; com]), 

 p. 39 of the glossary. See also Journal Asiatique, vi, 11 (ISOS), p. 174 ft". ; Stcin- 

 schneider, Intonioad altuni passi d'opere del medio evo relativi alia calainita, Roma, 

 1871. — A. Scinick (Hat Europa dcii Kompass iibei- .\rabien oder liat ilm Aral)ien 

 von Eui()]ta erhaiten?; Ausland, *)5, IS92) is not ac(|uaii!ted witii tiic impoitant tes- 

 tinumy of Ibn '.\diiari, altliongh it was to Ik; found in !•]. \\'iedcmanii, ("l)er die 

 Naturvvissensciiaften bei den Arabern, ]>. 20, and thus arrived at wrong conclusions, 

 as the earliest Arabic, information known to him dates from the thirteenth century. 



