600 COSMOS. 



more abstruse departments of astronomy, optics, physical 

 geography, and the theories of heat and magnetism, which, 

 without such aids, would have remained unopened. 



The question has often been asked, in the history of nations, 

 what would have been the course of events if Carthage had 

 conquered Rome, and subdued the west ? " We may ask, 

 with equal justice," as Wilhelm von Humboldt* observes > 

 "what would be the condition of our civilization at the 

 present day, if the Arabs had remained, as they long did, the 

 sole possessors of scientific knowledge, and had spread them- 

 selves permanently over the west? A less favourable result 

 would probably have supervened in both cases. It is to the 

 same causes which procured for the Romans a dominion over 

 the world the Roman spirit and character and not to 

 external and merely adventitious chances, that we owe the 

 influence exercised by the Romans on our civil institutions, 

 our laws, languages, and culture. It was owing to this bene- 

 ficial influence, and to the intimate alliance of races, that we 

 were rendered susceptible to the influence of the Greek mind 

 and language; whilst the Arabs directed their consideration 

 principally only to those scientific results of Greek investiga- 

 tion, which referred to the description of nature, and to 

 physical, astronomical, and purely mathematical science." 

 The Arabs, by carefully preserving the purity of their native 

 tongue and the delicacy of their figurative modes of ex- 

 pression, were enabled to impart the charm of poetic colouring 

 to the expression of feeling and of the noble axioms of wisdom ; 

 but to judge from what they were under the Abbassides, had 

 they built on the same foundation with which we find them 

 familiar, it is scarcely probable that they could have produced 

 those works of exalted poetic and creative art, which, fused 

 together in one harmonious accord, are the glorious fruits of 

 the mature season of our European culture. 



* Wilhelm von Humboldt, Ueber die Kawi-Sprache, bd. i. s. cclxii. 

 Compare also the excellent description of the Arabs in Herder's Ideen 

 zur Gesch. der Mensclieit, book xix. 4 and 5. 



