INFLUENCE OF THE ARABS. 629 



The influence exerted by the Koman empire on the social condition of 

 Europe in the two particulars to which reference has been Influence of the 

 made, the introduction of the civil law, and the establish- Mohammedans 

 ment of the Christian Church, occurred in the' period of its 

 decline, and was therefore contemporaneous with the spread of Moham- 

 medanism through the north of Africa, and the occupancy of Spain by 

 the Arabs. To a very considerable degree, the practical character which 

 European thought has exhibited in later centuries is to be attributed to 

 the Arabians, who have justly been termed the founders of physical sci- 

 ence ; for though, through them, the literature of Greece was intro- 

 duced into Western Europe, the writings of Aristotle, for example, being 

 made known through an Arabic translation, they imparted to what they 

 thus gave their own particular impress. Being the first founders of or- 

 ganized institutions for the cultivation of medical pursuits, answering 

 completely to our modern medical colleges, they attached to those pro- 

 fessional studies their own peculiar methods. It was therefore in this 

 way that botany and chemistry were particularly cultivated, be- The Arab 

 cause they were regarded as the foundation of Materia Medica. schools. 

 Humboldt remarks, that while the Europeans have been disposed to con- 

 nect the physical sciences with theology, the Arabians connected them 

 with medicine, and that through their medical colleges they ruled the 

 Christian schools, who looked up to Avicenna and Averroes as the great 

 authorities on these subjects. The most important applications of the 

 mathematical sciences to the purposes of life were made by the Arabs. 

 Of this it is sufficient to mention the introduction of the notation of arith- 

 metic and many instruments of navigation, the former not only fur- 

 nishing an invaluable aid in the computations required by the wants of 

 a commerce which reached from the north of Europe to Madagascar, and 

 from the Atlantic islands to China, but, what was of even more import- 

 ance, in the progress of mathematical science itself, the latter through the 

 aid afforded in astronomical observations permitting the successful ac- 

 complishment of voyages in seas which even to that time had been little 

 frequented. 



It would extend this chapter unduly if we were to enter into any de- 

 tail of the special contributions of the Arabs to the stock of Eu- Arab discov- 

 ropean knowledge. It may, however, be briefly remarked, that eries - 

 we owe to them our system of universal arithmetic, and even the title 

 under which it now passes, algebra. Their discovery of the strong acids, 

 nitric, sulphuric, and also aqua regia, constitutes an epoch in chemistry. 

 The cultivation of that science also was stimulated in no small degree 

 by their attempts at the transmutation of the baser metals into gold, and 

 the discovery of the means of indefinitely prolonging life the philoso- 

 pher's stone and the elixir vita?. In the science of optics, the work of 



