CHARACTER OF THE REVIVAL. 95 



but a small minority, it could not command that general 

 interest or exercise that general influence over the Western 

 mind which the Revival of Greek learning secured after 1453. 

 Varied as the Revival was in its nature, yet it was by its 

 literary element especially that its force powerfully operated. 

 It was on account of its being literary that it was 

 supremely and universally decisive. It may be said that had 

 the Greek world been accessible to the Western mind long 

 before it actually was, the intellectual benefits derived from 

 it would in the same way have been literary the Greeks, 

 as Christians, devoting but little attention to science and 

 being engrossed by theology and letters. In any case, 

 then, the action of the Arabs upon us would have 

 been just as necessary, and would have affected mediaeval 

 Europe in the same manner and degree as it did. Western 

 Europe was irrigated by the scientific stream of the Arabs 

 first, and by the literary and artistic stream of the Greeks 

 at a later period at a time, that is, when the Arabian plant, 

 dried up in Islam itself but growing up healthily in Christen- 

 dom, showed that the European soil had been duly 

 fertilised for the reception and cultivation of universal 

 knowledge. 



That the Revival was delayed so long was not an unmixed 

 evil, since its postponement permitted Europe to undergo 

 a lengthy period of preparatory training which secured its 

 certain and rapid success, for learning, when it at last came, 

 was propagated like wildfire ; that it came so late was mainly 

 due to the Great Schism an evil, therefore, not altogether 

 without compensation, since it gave Europe the time necessary 

 for its maturation. 



Now that the general character of the Revival has been 

 indicated, and the tardiness of its birth accounted for, we 

 may proceed to complete the sketch of its eminent scientists 

 begun in Chapter V., by presenting the aggregate of their 

 work. 



