26 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[February, 1903. 



feminine peoples to be conquered or civilised. The effect 

 they produce is proportionate (1) to the prepotency of the 

 atigressive element, and (2) to the amount of it. The 

 Macedonian highlanders, reinforced by Greeks from the 

 islauils and the two mainlands, who Hellenized Asia and 

 Eijyiit under Alexander and his successors, caonot have 

 been very numerous, but their propagandist energy and 

 intellectual superiority raised their prepotency to the 

 highest point ever attained. Accordingly, they diffused 

 Greek culture over a large part of the East, developed 

 Greek philosophy and science, and prepared a theatre for 

 the reception of Christianity. Cosmopolitan Alexandria, 

 in particular, was at once a menstruum of nationalities, 

 and the scene of the fusion of Oriental and Occidental 

 thought. 



It is estimated by M. Jullien that the colonists settled 

 in Gaul by Julius Caesar and Augustus did not exceed 

 thirty thousand. Add merchants, artizans. functionaries 

 and slaves, and the total may still be inconsiderable. 

 Yet with this limited material, the world- moulding people 

 modelled Provence in its own image, and from this base 

 it Romanised Northern Gaul, Western Germany, and 

 Southern Britain. The Eomau talent for government 

 made the Eomans as prepotent morally as the Greeks 

 were intellectually. 



In northern Gaul the Franks were more prepotent than 

 their Visigothic kin in the south, and probably more 

 numerous than the Romans there. They yet created no 

 new ethnical type, but only reinforced the fair dolicho- 

 cephalic element. They strengthened the characters of 

 energy, firmness, and seriousness in the Gaulish tempera- 

 ment. They did not produce the feudal rikjime, but they 

 contributed the fructifying pollen which developed it out 

 of existing usages, thus made it inevitable, and added to 

 it certain features that were peculiar to themselves. 

 Mediieval chivalry was the offspring of the marriage of 

 the German with the Gaulish minds. The key to French 

 history lies in the perception of this periodic cross-fertili- 

 sation. We observe it again in the abortive Reformation 

 of the sixteenth century, in the critical movement of the 

 eighteenth century, in French philosophy under Louis 

 Philippe, in the "French literature of the sixties, and 

 French science of the nineties. 



The numbers of the Saracen invaders of Spain are 

 stated at twenty-two thousand ; these were doubtless 

 largely increased by later immigration, but seven 

 centuries afterwards they did not exceed two hundred 

 thousand. Tet their influence on Visigothic Spain 

 was deep and has been lasting. By constant inter- 

 marriages they created a new ethnical type, of mixed 

 Arab and Spanish blood. Is the ferocity of the Spanish 

 character, as plainly shown in its saints as in its hidalgos, 

 in its religion as in its conquests and its sports, derived 

 from the foundation of savagery in the Semitic nature ? 

 They modified the physical environment by erecting public 

 buildings and constructing a system of irrigation that are 

 still in use. They established the culture of silk and 

 sugar. They transmitted the manufacture of paper and 

 of gunpowder, and the binding of books. They changed 

 the face of pharmacy and medicine. They diffused over 

 Europe the Arabic numerals, algebra and the higher 

 mathematics. Heeren asserts that they made no 

 important discovery, but others allege that thev originated 

 the germs of many later discoveries. Thev deeply affected 

 the vocabulary, the literary forms, and the "spirit of 

 Castihan literature. Their influence on philosophy can 

 be_ definitely stated. They translated the works of 

 Aristotle from the Syriac versions, not from the Greek. 

 The Arabic versions were translitei into Hebrew bv the 

 Jews, whose translations were translated iuto Latin. 



Aristotle four times decanted was the only Aristotle the 

 early Schoolmen knew. Aristotle was commented on by 

 Arabian Averroes ; Averroes was commented on by 

 Jewish Maimonides ; and from these blended sources 

 Greek-Arabie-Jewisli speculations flowed into mediaeval 

 Europe by influencing Alexander of Hales, Bonaventura, 

 and Albertus Magnus, the earliest Schoolmen. In all 

 these ways the Arabians communicated fresh vigour to 

 the European intellect. 



The little band of Normans who conquered Calabria 

 and Apulia consisted of no more than twelve hundred 

 horse and foot, though in twenty years it swelled to the 

 legendary total of sixty thousand. We should expect 

 their prepotency to have been more military than in- 

 tellectual or commercial ; yet they set up the earliest 

 medical school in Europe, and founded the city that first 

 distributed the products and manufactures of the East. 

 To Sicily the same conquering race transported from 

 Athens, Corinth and Thebes, a captive multitude of silk 

 weavers and artizans, who planted new industries in Italy. 

 To England it brought the seeds of new institutions, new 

 arts, new philosophies and theologies. The history of our 

 own country strikingly illustrates the Darwinian principle 

 that a social organism crossed, though at distant intervals, 

 with kindred varieties, gains vigour and fecundity. 



Group-Feetilisation. 

 Countries are fertilised by groups as well as by masses. 

 In the third century Germany received the first seeds of 

 Christianity at the hands of Roman refugees from perse- 

 cution ; and at the same time a multitude of Roman 

 provincials, captives of the Goths, diffused the same 

 religion in Dacia among their masters, whose apostle, 

 Ulphilos, invented the Gothic alphabet. In the sixth 

 century the bigotry of Justinian drove thousands of his 

 industrious Nestorian subjects from all provinces of the 

 Eastern Empire, whence they carried into Persia the arts 

 alike of peace and war. About the middle of the eighth 

 century Constautine Copronymus transplanted the sect of 

 Paulieians from the banks of the Euphi*ates to Constanti- 

 nople and Thrace, where they introduced and diffused the 

 germs of Protestantism They were strengthened by a 

 second and larger contingent, transported two hundred 

 years later from the Chalybian hills to the valleys of 

 Mount Hijemus. They spread from Bulgaria. Croatia and 

 Dalmatia, into the Greek provinces of Italy and Sicily, 

 whence they silently propagated their o[iinion.s as far as 

 Rome and Milan. In the south of France they were 

 known as the Albigeois, whose bleeding remnants bore 

 their faith into Northern France, England, Bohemia, and 

 Germany. An unbroken chain thus links the second 

 founder of Christianity to Wickliffe and Jerome, Calvin 

 and Luther. The exiled French Huguenots conveyed to 

 Prussia the secrets of several lucrative industries, and 

 (according to Laveleye) communicated to the Kerlin 

 mind the vivacity and precision that have aided 

 it in gaining an ascendancy over the vague and 

 dreamy spirit of Germany. They brought to England 

 sugar refining, and introduced improvements in the 

 paper manufacture. But the best gifts are men. The 

 Huguenots took to Germany the ancestors of Savigny, 

 who founded a new school of law and a new method — the 

 historical method, and Beausobre, who initiated a new 

 species of history — the history of doctrines. To England 

 they brought the " dissidence of Dissent, and the 

 Protestantism of the Protestant religion" in an ancestor 

 of Edward Miall ; in an ancestor of James Martineau, 

 that " purer and more perfect theism " to which Gladstone 

 believed that religion would one day be reduced ; while 

 his sister, Harriet, was the masculine expositor of an 



