THE ARABS. 221 



of the people, in. their early uncultivated condition, to the 

 motions of the stars, as we learn from the fact that the stellar 

 worship of Jupiter, practiced under the Lachmites by the race 

 of the Asedites, included Mercury, which, from its proximity 

 to the sun, is less frequently visible, it would nevertheless 

 appear that the remarkable scientific activity manifested by 

 the Arabs in all branches of practical astronomy is to be 

 ascribed less to native than to Chaldean and Indian influ- 

 ences. Atmospheric conditions merely favored that which 

 had been called forth by mental qualifications, and by the 

 contact of highly-gifted races with more civilized neighboring 

 nations. How many rainless portions of tropical America, as 

 Cumana, Coro, and Payta, enjoy a still more transparent at 

 mosphere than Egypt, Arabia, and Bokhara ! A tropical sky, 

 and the eternal clearness of the heavens, radiant in stars and 

 nebulous spots, undoubtedly every where exercise an influence 

 on the mind, but they can only lead to thought, and to the 

 solution of mathematical propositions, where other internal 

 and external incitements, independent of climatic relations, 

 affect the national character, and where the requirements of 

 religious and agricultural pursuits make the exact division of 

 time a necessity prompted by social conditions. Among cal- 

 culating commercial nations (as the Phoenicians) ; among 

 constructive nations, partial to architecture and the measure- 

 ment of land (as the Chaldseans and Egyptians), empirical 

 rules of arithmetic and geometry were early discovered ; but 

 these are merely capable of preparing the way for the estab- 

 lishment of mathematical and astronomical science. It is 

 only in the later phases of civilization that, the established 

 regularity of the changes in the heavens is known to be re- 

 flected, as it were, in terrestrial phenomena, and that, in ac- 

 cordance with the words of our great poet, we seek the " fixed 

 pole." The conviction entertained in all climates of the regu- 

 larity of the planetary movements has contributed more than 

 any thing else to lead man to seek similar laws of order in the 

 moving atmosphere, in the oscillations of the ocean, in the 



That a movement like that of the vault of heaven should have been 

 given to the whole tent, as has often been asserted, appears to me very 

 improbable. In the Chronica Monasterii Hirsaugiensis, edited by 

 Trithemius, we find scarcely any thing beyond a mere repetition of 

 the passage in the Annales Godefridi, without any information regard- 

 ing the mechanical construction. (Joh. Trithemii Opera Historica, 

 Part ii., Francof., 1601, p. 180.) Reinaud says that the movement waa 

 imparted " par des ressorts caches." {Extraits des Historiens Arabe.t 

 relatifs aux Guerres des Croisades, 1829, p. 435.) 



