358 PHYSICAL SCIENCE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. 



merits high in this respect. We have already seen, 

 that their minds were completely devoured by the 

 worst habits of the stationary period, mysticism 

 and commentation. They followed their Greek 

 leaders, for the most part, with abject servility, and 

 with only that kind of acuteness and independent 

 speculation which the commentator's vocation im- 

 plies. And in their choice of the standard subjects 

 of their studies, they fixed upon those works, the 

 Physics of Aristotle, which have never promoted 

 the progress of science, except so far as they incited 

 men to refute them ; an effect which they never 

 produced on the Arabians. That the Arabian 

 astronomers made some advances beyond the 

 Greeks, we have already stated : the two great in- 

 stances are, the discovery of the Motion of the Sun's 

 Apogee by Albategnius, and the discovery (recently 

 brought to light) of the existence of the Moon's 

 Second Inequality, by Aboul Wefa. But we cannot 

 but observe in how different a manner they treated 

 these discoveries, from that with which Hipparchus 

 or Ptolemy would have done. The Variation of the 

 moon, in particular, instead of being incorporated 

 into the system by means of an Epicycle, as Ptolemy 

 had done with the Evection, was allowed, almost 

 immediately, so far as we can judge, to fall into 

 neglect and oblivion : so little were the learned 

 Arabians prepared to take their lessons from obser- 

 vation as well as books. That in many subjects 

 they made experiments, may easily be allowed: 





