While the Christian world was enveloped in darkness, and all learning save that of worthless metaphysics and polemic theology had been banished from the minds of men; while England was distracted by Danish and Norman invasion, and barbarous monks defied the authority of her kings in the very presence of the throne; while Charlemagne was desolating the provinces of Germany by sweeping and merciless proscription; while ecumenical councils were proclaiming the virtues of celibacy and the sanctity of images; while the populace of Rome was amused by the scandal of a female pope; during this period of intellectual stagnation the Moorish princes of Spain and Sicily, alone among the sovereigns of the West, kept alive the sacred fires of art, science, and philosophy. The thirst of empire, stimulated by the fervor of religious enthusiasm, had subjected to the Moslem sceptre a territory exceeding in extent and opulence the vast and fertile area which, in its most prosperous age, acknowledged the authority of the Cæsars. The Arab capitals of Cordova, Cairo, Damascus, and Bagdad did not yield in magnificence of architecture, in pomp of ceremonial, in the skilful adaptation of the mechanical arts, in the accumulation of prodigious wealth, in the opportunities for luxurious indulgence, to the traditional precedence of imperial Rome. In scientific attainments no comparison existed between the vague and unprofitable speculations derived from the schools of Greek and Latin philosophy and the results obtained from the practical application of principles conducive to the development of the human reason and the promotion of the welfare of mankind. In the intellectual as well as in the physical world the success of the Arabs was unprecedented. During the most splendid period of the Spanish-Mohammedan empire, ignorance was accounted so disgraceful that men who had not enjoyed opportunities of education in early life concealed the fact as far as possible, just as they would have hidden the commission of a crime. On the other hand, the learned—trusted by the sovereign, the oracles of the schools, the depositaries of influence and power—never relaxed their efforts for the development of their talents and the increase of their knowledge; and such was their ardor and their perseverance, that they gave rise to the popular proverb, “There are two creatures that are insatiable,—the man of money and the man of science.” The thorough instruction imparted by the Hispano-Arab institutions of learning was highly appreciated by foreign nations, and students went from the most bigoted communities of Europe to enter the Universities of Cordova and Seville. In every branch of polite literature the indefatigable Moslem manifested his genius and his diligence. His versatile talents and his prolixity are at once the wonder and the despair of the most patient and studious reader. One remarkable personage, Ibn-al-Khatib, of Cordova, who died in the tenth century, is credited with nearly eleven hundred works on metaphysics, history, and medicine. Ibn-Hasen composed four hundred and fifty books on philosophy and jurisprudence. Another writer left behind him eighty thousand pages of closely written manuscript. It was no unusual circumstance for a dictionary or an encyclopædia to number fifty volumes. Commentaries on theology, religious tradition, and law were almost infinite in the extent and diversity of their topics. The historical productions of the Spanish Arabs were probably the most minute and voluminous ever published by any people, and their scrupulous fidelity to truth has been repeatedly established by the comparison of their descriptions with the architectural monuments which have descended to us, and by the corroborative evidence of distant and often hostile writers. The authors are usually deficient, however, in the application, and often even in the knowledge, of the canons of historical criticism; their love of the marvellous occasionally interferes with their judgment, and their descriptions, overloaded with florid rhetoric, belong rather to the province of the orator than to that of the accurate and discriminating historian. More than a thousand chroniclers have illustrated the annals of Moorish Spain. Their style, at once turgid and obscure, often renders their meaning unintelligible, while their text is overburdened with puerile anecdotes, Koranic allusions, and perplexing Oriental metaphors. Generations passed in another land, under conditions of extraordinary political and industrial activity, seemed powerless to eradicate or even to substantially modify the mental characteristics of a race bred amidst the solitude and dominated by the prejudices and the superstitions of the Asiatic Desert. The stubborn persistence of these traits is one of the most singular phases of its life and history. Its polity and its religious belief were foreign to, and irreconcilable with, those that prevailed elsewhere in Europe. Its customs, its language, its literature were all exotic. In works of imagination, the elegant fictions of the East, fascinating to the highest degree, and better adapted to the expanding intellect of man than the coarse and barbaric tales of Gothic origin, soon supplanted the latter, as the light and keen-edged scimetar had already driven out the clumsy broadsword of the followers of Roderick. The practical methods of thought founded upon the system of Aristotle everywhere obtained precedence over the unsubstantial and visionary theories of the Platonic school. In public assemblies, where men and women alike competed for the prize of literary superiority; in social intercourse, where the fair sex were accorded far more liberty than had ever been vouchsafed to the matrons and virgins of antiquity, or than is now enjoyed in the harems of the Orient, were developed and practised those amenities and graces which, fostered by songs of love and gallantry, eventually, through the agency of bard and minstrel, were distributed far and wide throughout the continent of Europe. The desire for learning and the appreciation of its advantages were so universal as to be considered national characteristics. The Khalif was the discriminating and generous patron of genius. His favorite ministers were those whose productions had raised them to deserved eminence in the world of letters. In the Moslem system, a competent acquaintance with the principles of jurisprudence was an essential requisite of every finished education. The wonderful grasp of the Arab mind, which seemed to adapt itself with equal facility to the most opposite conditions, was especially fitted for the exacting requirements of diplomacy,—a calling for which proficiency in learning has, in later times, come to be regarded rather as a disqualification than an advantage. The greatest scholars, therefore, discharged the most important employments, and stood highest in the precarious favor of the Moslem princes of Europe. Their literary productions were recompensed with even greater munificence than their services to the state. They almost constituted a caste, so marked were their pride and exclusiveness. Untold wealth was lavished upon them. They took precedence of nobles who traced their ancestry to a period lost in the mazes of Arabic tradition. Their daughters, occupants of the imperial harems, not infrequently became the mothers of sovereigns. Their ostentatious magnificence moved the envy of the most opulent subjects of the empire. Their residences were not inferior in extent and splendor to the habitations of royalty. Great retinues of slaves attended their progress through the streets. Soldiers in uniforms of silk and gold guarded their palaces, preceded their march, and protected their persons from the effects of popular violence. The most lovely women to be procured in the slave-markets of Europe and Asia filled their seraglios.
The poet, the astronomer, and the historian, raised to posts of high political responsibility, enjoyed the confidence and the intimate familiarity of the monarch in whose presence the most distinguished soldiers trembled. Such was the grateful tribute paid by imperial power to intellectual pre-eminence. That this extraordinary favor should not be abused could scarcely have been expected from even the strongest understandings when subjected to the temptations of flattery and ambition. The lessons of philosophy were insufficient to correct the ignoble vices inseparably incident to human nature, and which, in all ages, have exercised despotic influence over the mind of man. The insolence and rapacity of these ministers rendered them offensive to the people; their dangerous aspirations eventually excited the fears of the sovereign. No class of men was so universally detested. The ancient chronicles are filled with accounts of their cruelty, their injustice, and their misfortunes. Some were sacrificed to the jealousy of their master, others fell victims to the unreasoning fury of the populace. Few there were who retained, in the midst of greatness, those virtues and that modesty which should always characterize the noble pursuit of letters, success in which had raised these statesmen to places of such consideration and authority. While the Koran, as interpreted by the more rigid Mussulman theologians, discourages scientific inquiry and the study of natural philosophy, the Khalifs of Cordova, in more than one instance, incurred the reproach of heterodoxy through the indulgence of investigations prohibited by law to their subjects, and, thus encouraged, the intelligent society of the capital did not disdain to adopt the noble maxim of the head of a rival sect. which declares that “the ink of the learned is as precious as the blood of the martyrs,” while the consistent believer kept constantly in remembrance the statement of the Prophet that on the Day of Judgment a rigid account will be required of the literary opportunities improved or abused by the Faithful. Not only did these great princes encourage literature by the bestowal of substantial honors and rewards, but they themselves won in that field laurels more profitable and enduring than any gained in the most successful campaign against the infidel. Abd-al-Rahman I. was an astronomer and a poet of unusual ability. Hischem I. and Al-Hakem I. were among the best informed scholars and critics of their time. The talents and learning which rendered illustrious the life and character of Abd-al-Rahman II., his acquaintance with the sciences of law and natural philosophy, his patronage of letters, caused him to be compared to Al-Mamum, the most renowned of the Khalifs of Bagdad. The erudition and acquirements of Al-Hakem II. were prodigious; the volumes of the immense library of Cordova were enriched by notes and comments in his own hand, and such was his zeal that his eyesight was ultimately sacrified to the assiduity with which he applied himself to every branch of knowledge. The imperial dignity, great as it appeared at its culmination, during his reign was the least important of his titles to eminence. In the golden age of Arabic literature, he stood conspicuous amidst thousands of distinguished writers, jurists, annalists, biographers. A critical history of Andalusia which he composed was famous for its accuracy and for the vast stores of information it contained, and, widely read, it long remained a monument to the remarkable erudition and industry of its author. No scholar of his time was his superior in depth and variety of intellectual attainments. He was the master of many languages and dialects. He wrote with equal fluency and elegance on almost every subject. Nothing pleased him so much as the perusal of a new and valuable work, and the accumulation of books was with him a passion, which supplanted the duty of proselytism and the lust of power. His library was so extensive that it overflowed the great building which had been erected for its reception, and whose treasures, the masterpieces of every nation—Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Egyptian, Persian, Hebrew, and Arabic—were the delight of the learned and the marvel of an illiterate and superstitious age.
Abdallah attained distinction by the plaintive elegies in which he celebrated the misfortunes of his house; Suleyman was dreaded for the cutting verses in which he satirized the treachery and hypocrisy of the city and the court.
The spirit of literary taste and rivalry which had inspired the accomplished society of the khalifate was not lost with the dismemberment of the empire. The capital of each principality became a centre of culture, of learning, of the arts. The rulers of these petty states, whose population still retained, amidst the turbulent scenes of civil discord and foreign encroachment, no small measure of that intelligence and taste which had so eminently distinguished their fathers, vied with each other in their encouragement of science and in their patronage of learned men. In this noble emulation, as well as in their own scholastic acquirements, the Moorish princes maintained the fame of their ancestors and the traditions of the monarchy. Every facility was afforded to the professors of experimental science. Political honors, salaries, pensions, attracted the scholars of distant countries. Religious intolerance had no place in a society whose cardinal principle was absolute liberty of thought, and which had long been accustomed to consider the untrammelled exercise of reason as an inherent and inalienable right. Al-Moktadir, King of Saragossa, was renowned for his erudition; his knowledge of philosophy, geometry, and astronomy was superior to that of any of the wise men of his court. Al-Modhaffer, King of Badajoz, compiled a great encyclopædia. The rulers of Almeria, Valencia, and Seville were not less distinguished for their profound scholarship and the protection they afforded to letters. The monarchs of the Abbadide dynasty, and especially Motamid II., were renowned for the harmony and pathos of their verses. The Almohade sovereign, Abd-al-Mumen, the nominal representative of the destroying principle of fanaticism, was the admiring patron of Ibn-Tofail, Ibn-Zohr, and Averroes, three of the greatest writers who ever embellished by their talents the literature of any age. The achievements of the Alhamares of Granada in the world of art and science, and the culture of their court—the last refuge of learning in mediæval Europe—form the most attractive episode in the annals of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.
Encouraged by the example and the patronage of royalty, the mental development of the masses advanced with gigantic strides. The spirit of progress, the incentives of a lofty ambition, animated all orders and conditions of men. So universal was the thirst for knowledge that even the blind, though hampered by the unkindness of nature, were still able, in that age of intellectual rivalry, to attain a high rank in the scale of literary excellence. The rhyming dictionaries, suggestive memorials of perverted and laborious ingenuity; the impassioned poems, born of a tropical clime and a sensual religion; the unprecedented and rapid progress attained in the exact sciences; the voluminous works on theology and history, and the incredible erudition of their authors, the numerous universities, the grand libraries, the competitive examinations, the public contests for literary precedence and royal favor, attest a degree of enlightenment little to be expected from a people sprung from a barbarian and idolatrous ancestry, and are all the more remarkable when contrasted with the degradation of contemporaneous Europe. Fanaticism and prejudice closed to the inquisitive mind of the Moslem some of the most important stores of classic wisdom. For, while the natural philosophers and historians of Athens were studied with the greatest assiduity, Mohammedan piety rejected with abhorrence the sublime creations of Grecian poetry on account of the gross fictions of its mythology, so repugnant to the exalted ideas of the unity and perfection of God. Nor was the fiery and impassioned nature of the Arab capable of appreciating the dignity of heroic verse or the measured cadence and majestic pomp of the Attic drama. It delighted in stirring lyrics, satirical epigrams, amatory songs, and pathetic elegiac lays. The marked influence exerted by Arabic poetry on the civilization of Europe has already been referred to in these pages. Its matter is frequently overloaded with quaint conceits and obscure allusions, its lucidity habitually sacrificed to difficult feats of rhyme, its style disfigured by extravagant metaphor and hyperbole. Love of the beautiful, the marvellous, the supernatural were the most prominent characteristics of Arabic writers, and from the effects of these national propensities even dignified works on scientific subjects were not entirely free.
Learned and voluminous as were the purely literary productions of the Hispano-Arab scholars, they were of secondary importance when compared with the practical achievements of the experimenters in the world of science. The Saracens introduced into Western Europe the Indian numerals, the tabulated observations of Babylon, and the discoveries of the astronomers of the Alexandrian School. These wise investigators examined the effect of gravity, and narrowly missed ascertaining its principles; they constructed the pendulum clock and the balance; they explained with perspicuity and exactness the origin of many hitherto mysterious physical occurrences which popular ignorance was accustomed to ascribe to supernatural intervention rather than to the inexorable and necessary operation of Nature’s laws. They were the first to demonstrate that the aerolite was a cosmic fragment and not a missile of Divine wrath, and to subject the substances of which it was composed to chemical analysis. They formulated a table of specific gravities, and the densities of bodies as laid down by them is said by Tyndall not to vary essentially from those accepted at the present day. They understood the force of capillary attraction; they had approximated to the true height of the atmosphere, and had noted its diminished weight at a distance from the earth. As early as the tenth century they had formed singularly correct ideas of the nature and causes of many geological phenomena,—such as the varying erosion of strata by the action of the elements, the presence of fossil remains on the summits of mountain ranges and the different characteristics they exhibited according as their origin was terrestrial or aquatic, the elevation and depression of the surface of the globe extending through inconceivably protracted periods of time. Both chemistry and pharmacy were pursued with remarkable success in the laboratories of Moorish Spain. Medicine and surgery especially engaged the attention of the ambitious student, who found an enthusiastic and dangerous competitor for distinction in the Hebrew, whose attainments and skill not unfrequently placed him at the head of his profession. Dissection was not unknown, but reverence for the dead preserved the human form from the scalpel, and the anatomical researches of the Arab surgeon were, in public at least, limited to animals of the lower orders, multitudes of which were annually sacrificed to the demands of science. In that noble pursuit which has for its object the determination of the motions of the celestial bodies, and the establishment of their relations with each other and with the universe, the Hispano-Arab, as in the investigation of other natural phenomena and in the solution of abstruse philosophical problems, evinced a rare and peculiar aptitude. In Moorish Spain, as in Chaldea, Babylonia, and ancient Egypt—where all astronomers were priests—the sanctuary of God was in part devoted to the study of the most sublime and wonderful of His creations, the visible heavens. Gnomous, astrolabes, dioptras, solstitial and equinoctial armils, were placed upon the minarets of the most sacred temples. The calculations of the observer were completed in the academical institution which Moslem tradition and practice caused to be attached to every building consecrated to the worship of Allah. No profession ranked higher than that of the astronomer. The sovereign loaded him with wealth and honors. In the mosque he was received with a consideration not inferior to that exacted by the most revered expounders of the Mohammedan law. The populace, recognizing in him a mysterious personage who in secret held communion with other worlds, and too often confounding him with the astrologer, gave way as he traversed the streets, and in whispers spoke of him as the heir of the wisdom of Solomon and as a mortal invested with supernatural powers. The study of the heavens was greatly promoted by the progress made in the science of optics, and by the lucid explanation of illusions due to atmospheric refraction. In this way the twinkling of the stars, the apparent inequality of the horizontal and vertical diameters of the planets, and the prolongation of the day after sunset were accounted for. The invention of the telescope, the comparison of observations taken at widely distant stations in every portion of the globe, the perfection of apparatus which measures, weighs, and separates the component elements of our atmosphere, the intelligent application of the principles of physics, and the progressive experience of nine hundred years have not affected the definiteness and scientific accuracy of these conclusions.
The Spanish Moslems possessed both terrestrial and celestial globes; some were composed of brass, others of massy silver. Their astronomical instruments were beautifully made, and were graduated with the greatest minuteness and precision. They had ten different kinds of quadrants, one of the most ingenious and complete having been invented by Al-Zarkal, of Toledo. They made use of clocks moved by water, sand, and weights. The Arabic armillary spheres and astrolabes preserved in the museums of Europe are not surpassed by the most laborious efforts of modern ingenuity in excellence of finish, and in the accuracy of adjustment which implies the possession by the artisan of a competent knowledge of the delicate operations for which they were intended. It must not be forgotten that these instruments, through whose agency such wonderful results were achieved, will compare favorably in elegance of construction with the optical appliances of the best equipped observatory of to-day.
To facilitate the investigations of the natural historian, there were numerous zoological collections, where the habits and characteristics of animals and birds of every description could be observed and noted for the present entertainment and future profit of mankind. The royal botanical gardens contained an endless variety of plants, both indigenous and exotic, cultivated for their brilliant foliage, their grateful fragrance, or their culinary and medicinal virtues.
The portentous development of Arabic intellectual activity presents one of the most interesting and instructive examples of progress in the history of the human mind. The Bedouin was a typical barbarian and freebooter. He had no organized government, and acknowledged no permanent authority. Without a settled habitation, he despised all who pursued the avocations of peace. He subsisted by pillage. His religion was debased, cruel, idolatrous. With the exception of a few poems and some collections of tales recounting the exploits of spirits and magicians, he had nothing which could be dignified by the name of literature. It is true that his language was one of the most copious and flexible ever devised by man, but its powers had never been tested and were practically unknown. Even the courage of the Arab was not exempt from suspicion, and he notoriously preferred the advantages of ambuscade and surprise to the more hazardous encounter of the open field. Almost his sole, certainly his most conspicuous, virtue was hospitality; but every consideration of friendship and courtesy was forgotten as soon as the guest of the night had quitted the precincts of his camp. The prevalence of such conditions was, it must be admitted, eminently unfavorable to the encouragement of science and letters. The Arab conqueror, therefore, in the prosecution of his literary career, owed nothing to the usually powerful influence of national tradition and example. His first important act was the destruction of the great library of Alexandria, his second the spoliation of the monuments of the Pharaohs, and the razing—in order to obtain materials for his own inferior constructions—of the vast structures of Greek and Roman antiquity which adorned that famous capital. The thoroughness with which this work was accomplished is demonstrated by the total absence of any remains of those superb edifices which were alike the pride of the Macedonian dynasty and the boast of the age of Augustus and Hadrian. In these acts of violence he only followed the inherent destructive and predatory instincts of his race. Contact with civilization and experience of its benefits, however, soon wrought a change in his nature, a change momentous in its results and which has no parallel in the annals of human advancement. A century after the Hegira, the descendant of the vagrant Bedouin had attained a remarkable predominance in every department of polite literature and scientific knowledge. The impulse which wrought this mighty intellectual transformation was imparted by Egypt, and sprang from the historical and philosophical reminiscences of the Alexandrian Museum. That renowned institution was the unique and practical embodiment of the passion for innovation, of the inventive faculty, of the utilitarian spirit of the ancient world. The doctrines of the higher antiquity were, as is well known, largely theoretical and speculative. The occasional appearance of men of genius like Hippocrates and Aristotle only served to emphasize the worthless character of the verbose and unprofitable disquisitions of the schools of Greek philosophy. Anterior to the fourth century before Christ, science owed little to experiment, and all knowledge of any value was empirical, or the result of purely accidental discovery. No intelligent method of investigation existed. No system which had for its object the physical amelioration of humanity was deemed worthy of attention. Such practical aims were trifles and beneath the dignity of the wise man of that age. His time was occupied in attempts to explain the nature of the soul, to define the supreme good, to discover the original essence of all created things, to demonstrate the fancied harmony or dissonance of numbers. In these absurd and fruitless occupations were wasted intellectual abilities which, properly directed, might have changed the aspect of nature and the condition of society many centuries before modern inventive genius was afforded an opportunity to exhibit its marvellous powers. The shrewd and discerning soldier, who, in the partition of empire, received as his share the ancient dominion of Egypt, pursued a diametrically opposite course in the policy he adopted for the promotion of education and literature. He united the culture of Macedon and the venerable traditions of the civilization of Persia with the experience gained in many campaigns. His skeptical and arbitrary nature had little sympathy with the abject superstitions of his Egyptian subjects, and still less with the despotic pretensions of their priesthood. His position as ruler invested him with almost theocratical authority. Scarcely was he seated upon the throne before a radical change was resolved upon. The genius of Ptolemy impelled him to attempt the modification of a system, sanctified by the practice of immemorial antiquity, in such a way that its outward observance would not be repugnant to Greek intelligence nor, by the violation of long-established prejudices, the stability of the newly constituted government be endangered. To accomplish this end, the worship of Serapis, the representative of Oriental Pantheism, was introduced. This strange co-ordination of skepticism and idolatry was productive of remarkable consequences. The Egyptians admitted with enthusiasm a new god into their Pantheon. The Ptolemaic dynasty was placed upon a firm and enduring basis. In the magnificent temple where was enshrined the image of the divinity, whose nominal worship became of such importance to future civilization, a grand institution of learning, totally unlike any that had hitherto imparted instruction to man, was established. Considerations of practical utility were recognized as the sole and legitimate objects of its foundation. Observation, experiment, debate, occupied the leisure of its professors. The principles of every known science whose application could enure to the benefit of humanity—medicine, surgery, astronomy, botany, physics—were expounded in its halls. Its library, subsequently destroyed by Amru, was the greatest collection of books ever assembled in ancient times. The fame of this great university soon spread throughout the world. The number of students who attended its lectures was incredible, not infrequently reaching the enormous figure of thirteen thousand. Their ambition was excited by the presence of the sovereign, who often assisted in the experiments and participated in the discussions.
The most prominent characteristic of this unique educational institution was the catholic spirit which it manifested towards the representatives of hostile religious systems. Paganism was the recognized worship of the state. Its temples were numerous, its ceremonials of sacrifice, divination, and augury were performed with every accessory which could be afforded by unlimited wealth and prodigal munificence. Yet the philosophical doctrines consecrated by a hoary antiquity, and whose study has given rise to modern agnosticism, were highly esteemed by the educated classes of Egypt. It was to facilitate their introduction and acceptance that the scoffing Greeks had consented with mock solemnity to prostrate themselves before the altar of Serapis. The Jew, elsewhere despised, readily found a respectful audience for his monotheistic principles in the cosmopolitan society of Alexandria, and, what was to him of far greater moment, an opportunity to reap enormous profits from the commercial advantages offered by the most flourishing metropolis in the world. The fabled genealogies of the Olympian deities were perused by Jewish scholars with the same attention, if not with the same respect, as the sacred legends of the Hebrew race. The poems of Homer survived to delight posterity through the editions of the Alexandrian Museum; the Greek version of the Old Testament, known as the Septuagint, published by Ptolemy Philadelphus, is still an authority with erudite theologians. The spirit of inquiry was the dominating factor of the Ptolemaic educational and philosophical systems. Every hypothesis was rejected which could not stand the test of practical experiment and demonstration. No fact was considered too insignificant to be made the subject of intelligent and exhaustive scrutiny. The most abstruse problems of mathematical and physical science, the most obscure and difficult questions concerning life—its origin, its progress, its decay—were daily proposed for investigation and solution. The study of biology was one of the favorite pursuits of the Alexandrian School, and it is not impossible that topics which in recent years have so deeply engaged the attention of the learned may have been a subject of its profound and labored disquisitions. Among these was, perhaps, the doctrine of the Survival of the Fittest, which was not unfamiliar to the Greeks, for its adoption is advocated by Plato in his Republic, and its practical application was long a leading principle of the Code of Lacedæmon. The rational procedure employed in the study of medicine and surgery was most favorable to the prosecution of biological and physiological research. These sciences were established upon the solid foundation of anatomical demonstration. Autopsies and vivisections were of daily occurrence. The active participation of the kings in the operations of the clinic was due, no doubt, to a desire to discover the secret of longevity, and to justify by their sanction proceedings which the prejudices of all the races of antiquity branded as desecrations, actions abhorrent to reverence and decency. Many notable discoveries were the result of these enlightened methods. The offices of the internal organs, the ramifications of the venous system, the form and convolutions of the brain, the phenomena of respiration, digestion, and procreation, were described in terms remarkable for correctness and lucidity. It is a singular fact that in the midst of all these anatomical investigations, many of which were made upon the bodies of living animals, the peculiar function of the arteries remained unknown. The Alexandrian academicians supposed that they were intended, in their normal condition, for the circulation of air, and the vast period of thirteen centuries was destined to elapse before the genius of Harvey designated their true place in the human economy. Herophilus explained the relations of the brain and the nervous system. Erasistratus established the distinction between the nerves of sensation and motion. Alexandria abounded in specialists of every kind,—oculists, lithotomists, surgeons who treated the diseases of women. The practice of medicine was indirectly aided by a pursuit of a widely divergent character, the cultivation of alchemy. As, afterwards, under the Arabs, though not with such marked results, this delusion, through the discoveries induced by its study, proved of substantial service to the intelligent physician. The department of the Materia Medica was enriched by the importation of drugs, and by the cultivation, in botanical gardens, of foreign plants of great medicinal value. The school of the Ptolemies was so famous that an attendance upon its lectures, for however short a period, conferred upon a practitioner great professional distinction. All of the celebrated medical men of antiquity, with the single exception of Hippocrates, derived their information, and were indebted for their success, to the Alexandrian Museum. The extraordinary impulse imparted to all branches of science by this splendid institution was not materially checked for centuries. Before its foundation astronomy had long been stationary, but with the facilities it afforded a gigantic advance was accomplished. The heavens were mapped out and the constellations defined. The stars were catalogued. The motions of the planets were observed and compared, and the erroneous but plausible system of eccentrics and epicycles invented to account for the various phases they presented at different times. The globular form of the earth was demonstrated to the satisfaction of every intelligent mind. The mechanism and cycles of eclipses, the precession of the equinoxes, the first and second inequalities of the moon were explained. Estimates, more or less approximated to correctness, were made of the dimensions of the globe. Its surface was delineated, its climates described, hypotheses to account for the phenomena of its atmospheric changes advanced. Besides those already referred to, all sciences of a practical tendency—geometry, botany, natural history—were accorded a place in the course of the Museum; even the ordinarily prohibited studies of astrology and divination were not excluded. The names of such mathematicians as Euclid, Archimedes, and Conon; of such astronomers as Ptolemy and Hipparchus; of such geographers as Eratosthenes; of such geometers as Apollonius Pergæus; of such ornithologists as Callimachus; of such poets as Theocritus and Lycophron, suggest the infinite obligations of posterity to the noble institution established by Ptolemy Philadelphus at the mouth of the Nile. From such a source was derived the inspiration of Arab intellectual progress that preserved and multiplied the precious literary treasures in which were embodied the wisdom and the achievements of antiquity. That inspiration was, however, destined to long remain dormant. A melancholy period of eleven centuries of bigotry, ferocity, and ignorance separates the Alexandrian Museum from the University of Cordova.