U 
gan to support themselves on my words; so that they 
only changed their colours, their tactics were still the 
same. 
I repeated to them a thousand times that they should 
not maintain a point because AH Bei had said so; but 
that, before they began to dispute, they should exa- 
mine with their own reason whether the thing was pro- 
bable, whether it was possible, or had ever occurred, 
and then they might discuss it; at last I obtained this 
result; and I hope that the spark of light may in time 
produce good consequences among them. 
For geometry they have Euclid, whose work they 
showed me in great folio volumes, much corroded, 
because no one has the courage to read it, and still 
less to copy it, except perhaps a dozen of pages. For 
cosmogony, they rest on the Koran; their cosmogra- 
phy is taken from Ptolomy, whom they call B-tlai- 
mous. 
Their astronomy is reduced to a few of the first prin- 
ciples which are necessary to their calculating the time 
by the sun, with astrolabes, very clumsy, and construct- 
ed separately for each latitude. 
As to mathematics, they know nothing but the. so- 
lution of a small number of problems. They study 
no geography. In physics they follow Aristotle, but 
scarcely give him the least attention. Metaphysics 
are their delight; and the doctors consume all their 
moral powers in the study of this science. Chymistry 
is unknown to them; but they have some notions of 
alchymy, and now and then some miserable adepts ap- 
pear. Anatomy is entirely banished by their religion, 
on account of their legal purity, their ideas on the dead, 
on the separation of the sexes, &c. &c. In medicine 
they study but a few miserable empirics, and know 
