THE ARABS. 579 



by the Nestorian Christians at Edessa in Mesopotamia, were 

 settled at Mecca as early as Mohammed's time, and there 

 lived on a footing of friendly intercourse with the Prophet 

 and Abu-Bekr. 



The school of Edessa, a prototype of the Benedictine 

 schools of Monte Cassino and Salerno, gave the first impulse 

 to a scientific investigation of remedial agents yielded from the 

 mineral and vegetable kingdoms. When these establishments 

 were dissolved by Christian fanaticism, under Zeno the Isau- 

 rian, the Nestorians were scattered over Persia, where they 

 soon attained to political importance, and founded at 

 Dschondisapur, in Khusistan, a medical school, which was 

 afterwards much frequented. They succeeded towards the 

 middle of the seventh century, in extending their know- 

 ledge and their doctrines as far as China, under the Thang 

 dynasty, 572 years after Buddhism had penetrated thither 

 from India. 



The seeds of western civilization, which had been scattered 

 over Persia by learned monks and by fne philosophers of the last 

 Platonic school at Athens persecuted by Justinian, had exer- 

 cised a beneficial influence on the Arabs during their first 

 Asiatic campaigns. However faint the sparks of know- 

 ledge diffused by the Nestorian priesthood might have been, 

 their peculiar tendency to the investigation of medical phar- 

 macy, could not fail to influence a race which had so long 

 lived in the enjoyment of a free communion with nature, 

 and which preserved a more vivid feeling for every kind of 

 natural investigation, than the Greek and Italian inhabitants 

 of cities. The cosmical importance attached to the age of 

 the Arabs depends in a great measure on the national charac- 

 teristics, which we are here considering. The Arabs, I would 

 again remark, are to be regarded as the actual founders of 

 physical science, considered in the sense which we now apply 

 to the words. 



It is undoubtedly extremely difficult to associate any abso- 

 lute beginning with any definite epoch of time in the history 

 of the mental world, and of the intimately connected ele- 

 ments of thought. Individual luminous points of knowledge, 

 and the processes by which knowledge was gradually attained, 

 may be traced, scattered through very early periods of time. 

 How great is the difference that separates Dioscorides, who 

 2p 2 



