INDISTINCTNESS OF IDEAS. 275 



were monks, or had been such originally. Con- 

 vents were, during these stormy ages, the asylum 

 of sciences and letters. Without these religious 

 men, who, in the silence of their monasteries, oc- 

 cupied themselves in transcribing, in studying, and 

 in imitating the works of the ancients, well or ill, 

 those works would have perished ; perhaps not one 

 of them would have come down to us. The thread 

 which connects us with the Greeks and Romans 

 would have been snapt asunder; the precious 

 productions of ancient literature would no more 

 exist for us, than the works, if any there were, 

 published before the catastrophe that annihilated 

 that highly scientific nation, which, according to 

 Bailly, existed in remote ages in the center of 

 Tartary, or at the roots of Caucasus. In the 

 sciences we should have had all to create ; and at 

 the moment when the human mind should have 

 emerged from its stupor and shaken off its slum- 

 bers, we should have been no more advanced than 

 the Greeks were after the taking of Troy." He 

 adds, that this consideration inspires feelings to- 

 wards the religious orders very different from those 

 which, when he wrote, were prevalent among his 

 countrymen. 



Except so far as their religious opinions inter- 

 fered, it was natural that men who lived a life of 

 quiet and study, and were necessarily in a great 

 measure removed from the absorbing and blind- 

 ing interests with which practical life occupies the 



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