94 PROGRESS OF SCIENCE. 



Crusaders themselves had been struck by the civilisation of 

 the Greek Empire, had admired it as vastly superior to their 

 own, and had brought back therefrom improving notions and 

 novel ideas. Was the want of communications so great as 

 to prove an insuperable difficulty ? No ; for the renascence 

 of industry, commerce, and navigation had gradually broken 

 down that obstacle as early as the Xlth century. On the 

 other hand, how was it left to the hated Saracens in the first 

 instance to teach Europe science and philosophy, and prepare 

 its mind for a further evolutionary step ? 



All these questions are satisfactorily answered by a fact 

 which, though it has not escaped attention, has not as yet 

 had one of its consequences pointed out by historians with 

 due force. There were, for nearly a thousand years, roundly 

 speaking, until the XVth century, two Europes in reality a 

 Greek and a Latin and they were completely severed 

 intellectually by the GREAT SCHISM, begun with the quarrel 

 of Leo, the Isaurian, with Pope Gregory II. on the question 

 of image-worship (726), and irrevocably established by 

 ritualistic differences, in 1043, m Hildebrandt's time. The 

 severance of Christendom into two unyielding Churches the 

 Greek and the Roman consummated that separation of the 

 East from the West, which the removal of the capital of the 

 Empire from Rome to Byzantium by Constantine (330), and 

 the subsequent barbarian invasion of the West, had politically 

 already brought about. The Great Schism proved, between 

 the two sections of Europe, an effective Chinese Wall. The 

 Roman Church forbade the West, under the penalty of ex- 

 communication, to have any intercourse with the " heretical " 

 Greeks in matters theological and the interdict practically 

 extended to Greek learning : any Greek teaching aroused 

 suspicion. The Saracens, on the other side, imposed their 

 presence upon Western Europe by the force of conquest. If 

 their vicinity could not be helped, their learning and teaching 

 at least could be checked by repression, and were, wherever 

 that course could be adopted. This learning, however, 

 slowly filtered through the boundaries of Islam, and, in time, 

 made itself felt in Europe as we have seen. But as it was 

 scientific in the main, and as science could at best attract 



