THE LEGACY OF THE GREEKS 157 



ficent palaces, their splendid libraries, their literature, their 

 restless and inquiring, if still somewhat subjugated spirit, amply 

 attest the fact. They made some progress in their physical 

 investigations ; in some sense they transformed alchemy into 

 a science. Many of our scientific terms are transferred directly 

 from their language. 



But there was something in their mental organisation or 

 something in the time which held them in check. We may not 

 inaptly compare them to the Hindu or to the Chinese. Our 

 decimal notation is an evidence of the success with which the 

 Hindu cultivated mathematics. We know that the Chinese 

 possessed the compass a thousand years before our era ; the 

 printing-press and gunpowder yet more anciently. Yet with 

 the aid of his more facile methods of calculation the Hindu made 

 no contributions worthy of his invention. With the printing- 

 press the Chinese spread wide no wonderful literature. By the 

 aid of the compass they made no great discoveries. With the 

 aid of gunpowder they made no vast conquests. Neither 

 Chinese nor Hindu made any notable additions to the stock 

 of human knowledge. They left no deep impress upon human 

 civilisation. They made interesting beginnings, then stopped. 

 The same is true of the Saracen. 



Doubtless, if the arms of Charles the Hammer had not stayed 

 the northern sweep of the Mohammedan hosts, the six or seven 

 centuries of European history that followed would have been 

 written in far different fashion. It is scarcely believable that 

 they could have fixed their faith upon the North. It is scarce 

 believable that their yoke would have remained for long. But 

 in the clash of warring creeds, in the mingling of alien peoples, 

 in the diffusion of Arabian culture, the reintroduction of the 

 manners and modes of civilised life, the utter stagnation which 

 had fallen upon European lands, we may believe, would have 

 come to an end. We may conjecture that from this foreign in- 

 vasion might have resulted something of that same freedom 

 and stir of life which came with the struggle of the sects in 

 the Reformation, eight centuries later. 



It was not to be. The tide of the Saracen was rolled back- 

 wards, its energies of conquest were turned into the channels 

 of intellectual development. Europe was left to rot on, until 

 in the obscure order of events, time for it should be born 

 again. 



