The consideration of Arabic intellectual life, and especially of its culmination in the Spanish Peninsula, the astonishing energy, curiosity, and perseverance that characterized every stage of its development from its very origin to its extinction, the phenomenal rapidity of its advance, the superhuman greatness of its deeds, suggest the infinite possibilities to which its revival may ultimately give rise as affecting the destiny of nations.
At the present day, when every year, nay, almost every month, brings forth some new and wonderful discovery; when vocal communication between distant points is maintained solely by atmospheric aid; when chemistry is resolving into numerous constituents substances for ages considered elementary; when by the employment of enormous lenses the heavenly bodies are brought within almost tangible propinquity to the earth; when even the most humble offices of domestic economy are performed by the mysterious agency of electrical apparatus; when the invention of tremendously powerful means of destruction daily renders war more difficult and peace more desirable; when the gases of the atmosphere are artificially decomposed and separately made the objects of commercial traffic; when the skill of the physician has practically eradicated diseases long deemed incurable; in this era of scientific progress and of unparalleled intellectual achievement who will be so bold as to assert that even the dreams of the alchemist, the cherished phantoms of Moorish imagination, may not soon be realized? In scores of laboratories in Europe and America there are to-day chemists, diligently and quietly, with the patience, if not with the enthusiasm, of the ancient adept, endeavoring to determine by the aid of the prodigious resources of modern science the ever doubtful question of the transmutation of metals. From all quarters of the civilized world come well-authenticated reports that some of the greatest minds of the century, minds whose every utterance claims attention and respect, are engaged in investigations whose effects may surpass those of the imagined universal panacea, and which will impart to the listless energy, to the deformed symmetry, and to hoary and decrepit age the strength of long departed manhood;
“Lumenque Juventæ
Purpureum.”
Is it too much to assume that our age, so prolific of marvels that what excites astonishment to-day is certain to become commonplace to-morrow, will accomplish these and even greater results; an age ingenious in theory, fertile in invention, phenomenal in versatility, skilful in practice; an age of eccentric and startling propositions; an age which looks forward with audacious confidence to the solution of even that most recondite problem of biology, the artificial production of organic life? Is it unreasonable to expect that those secrets of nature which have hitherto eluded the researches of philosophical experiment and scientific inquiry will erelong be revealed?
These being among the assumed possibilities of science, let us turn to what it has actually done for mankind. In what respect are these investigations preferable to that absolute resignation to ecclesiastical authority which so generally prevailed when devotion was exalted and intelligence enchained? What advantage has resulted from this poring over manuscripts, this collecting of plants, this delving in the earth, this star-gazing, this mixing of acids, this study of skeletons? Cui bono?
The answer comes back from every phase of an advancing civilization, from the din of a thousand workshops and the clatter of a million looms; from the whistle of the locomotive in the desert and the bell of the steamer stranded amidst the polar ice; from the network of railways seaming each continent from centre to circumference; from canal and aqueduct, from tunnel and bridge, and all the grand monuments of civil engineering; from the safety-lamp, flickering through the poisonous vapors of the miner’s cave; from the seats of commerce crowded with the appliances of enjoyment and luxury; from the harbors with their forests of shapely masts; from the innumerable triumphs of inventive genius which alike increase the pleasures of the wealthy and ease the burdens of the poor, and are gratefully felt at the desk of the speculative philosopher and the bench of the artisan. But even more than this has science accomplished. It has explored new regions in the boundless domain of human knowledge. It has discovered and applied the laws of planetary motion; determined the distances of the heavenly bodies; estimated their masses; laid down the substances of which they are composed; and described the complex relations in which they stand to each other. It has measured time down to the incredibly small fraction of the millionth part of a second. It has scanned the borders of the universe, and brought within the scope of vision stars so distant that the image formed to-day upon the retina of the observer is produced by light emitted five million years ago. By means of the microscope, it has opened a fairy world teeming with myriad types of animal and vegetable life, more curious than the fabled regions of the Orient, more wonderful than the enchanted garden of Armida. It has placed upon the photographic negative faces, flowers, landscapes, depicted in the exquisite and harmonious colors of Nature. By the discovery of the radiferous salts,—polonium, radium, thorium, actinium, titanium,—it has disclosed to the chemist a new and enchanting field of research, whose extent and possibilities cannot yet even be made the subject of intelligent conjecture; and has instituted the study of substances whose astonishing properties tend to overthrow the hitherto well-founded theories of the various relations of matter, and, in some instances, to imperatively demand their modification or radical reconstruction; whose investigation has established as truisms the most glaring apparent physical paradoxes; in the presence of whose marvellous effects the properties of solidity, cohesion, and opacity seem to vanish; which exhibit such a subdivision of matter into infinitesimal particles as to suggest their practical dissociation, and in comparison with whose dimensions the inconceivably minute primordial atoms of Democritus are absolutely colossal; the origin of whose mysterious power no hypothesis, no analysis, no apparatus, has so far been able to satisfactorily determine; which not improbably may afford solutions of cosmical phenomena whose manifestations alone have been observed; and which, by their application to anatomical, medical, and mechanical science, may ultimately serve to explain the origin of life, and confer inestimable material benefits upon the human race. Of these metallic, radio-active bodies, radium, the most important and wonderful, is one that presents pre-eminently interesting and inexplicable peculiarities; a substance which possesses the remarkable qualities of self-luminosity, thermogenesis, and actinism; which is endowed with a singular recuperative power, by means of which its recently diminished force is restored without the apparent aid of any external agency; whose primary and apparently inexhaustible source of potency has been variously and inconclusively asserted to be the sun, the earth, the atmosphere; whose emanations, charged with negative electricity, impart the latter to the solid, liquid, or gaseous medium through which they pass, and communicate temporary phosphorescence and permanent coloring to objects subjected to their impact; whose rays travel with such inconceivable velocity that they would traverse a distance equal to five times the circumference of the earth in a single second; which have mass as well as energy; which, despite the enormous rapidity with which they move, may be instantaneously deflected from a direct to a curvilinear path by the interposition of a magnet; and by whose aid photographs may readily be taken through thick plates of lead and iron. Science has invented explosives that rend mountains asunder; by the application of the carbon point, it has caused the hardest steel to fluidize in the twinkling of an eye. From the black and glutinous refuse of gas manufacture, it has extracted pigments whose tints vie in brilliancy with those of the rainbow, and remedial agents which in certain departments have revolutionized the practice of medicine. It has perfected the transmission of light, so that by the mere touching of a button great cities are in an instant illuminated. With no small degree of probability, it has suggested that incessant and universal molecular activity, pervading all matter both organic and inorganic, may be the controlling principle of the mysterious condition which we designate as life, and that the weight of every substance is in an inverse ratio to its atomic energy. It has made objects hitherto opaque transparent, and has opened to the view of the surgical operator the inmost recesses of the human body. It has removed without apparent injury organs whose functions were long considered indispensable to animal existence. By simple manipulation it has cured congenital deformities formerly considered hopeless, and restored distorted limbs to their normal strength and symmetry. It has discovered the specific pathogenic bacteria which produce many diseases, and rendered them innocuous by means of their own cultures. Through the injection of an extract obtained from a glandular secretion it has prolonged the pulsations of the heart in an animal for hours after decapitation; by rhythmic compression it has restored the action of that organ after it had completely ceased—when life was practically extinct.
Science has told us that the clear blue of the firmament, seemingly of spotless purity, is caused by floating particles of atmospheric dust; that every twig, and leaf, and blade of grass—even every newly-fallen drop of rain—are radiferous centres of electric energy; that motion is the rule, and quiescence the exception, affecting the component atoms of the universe,—if, indeed, quiescence at all exists; that the parasite, infesting the body of the smallest of insects, is itself the abode of minute organisms; that the very air we breathe is swarming with the germs of suffering, disease, and death. It has pressed into its service the imponderable agents, and demonstrated their interconvertibility; has bestowed priceless blessings upon the living; has soothed the pillow of languishing humanity, and extended its welcome offices even to the grave. It has given us an idea of the duration of our globe, and established a system of chronology the immensity of which we endeavor in vain to comprehend, where centuries are as nothing, and cycles but fleeting periods of time. From a single fossil bone it has reproduced the form and described the habits of the monster to which, in prehistoric ages, it belonged. It has measured the movement of thought, which, despite its proverbial rapidity, has been proved to be only about one hundred feet a second. By investigation of the mental phenomena of hypnotism and telepathy, it has added to the evidence which tends to establish the existence of the Soul of the World. It has taught all to exert the proudest prerogatives of intelligence,—to think, to doubt, to reason,—and has rescued the mind of man long buried beneath the accumulated absurdities of venerable tradition. These great results it has achieved in its childhood, under adverse influences, opposed by the fanatical and the ignorant, with its devotees menaced by the dungeon, the scaffold, and the fires of the Inquisition; but who, with that stern, unflinching perseverance which at last reaps its reward in the tardy honors of posterity, have pursued their way, conscious of the nobility of their calling, and fortified by the reflections of that sublime philosophy which “looks through Nature up to Nature’s God.”
Society has progressed far beyond that intellectual stage when the comet was dreaded as a harbinger of universal misfortune; when the appearance of the pestilence was considered a manifestation of the wrath of the Almighty; when superstitious fear transformed every floating mist into a cloak for goblins; regarded every rustling of the foliage as an evidence of supernatural presence; saw in every ebullition of gaseous water a mysterious phenomenon, in every subterranean rumble an omen of sinister and portentous augury. This emancipation of the human intellect, this impetus to every expression of material progress, cannot be attributed to ecclesiastical inspiration. They were not a product of the Crusades. They were not the effect of the Reformation. They are not the work of Christianity, whose policy has indeed been constantly inimical to their toleration or encouragement. They are a legitimate consequence of the liberal policy adopted and perpetuated by the Ommeyade Khalifs throughout their magnificent empire, whose civilization was the wonder, as its power was the dread, of mediæval Europe.
Modern science unquestionably owes everything to Arab genius. From the mass of debased superstitions, mummeries, and fetichism, entertained and cultivated by the Bedouin, emerged, as has been seen, a thorough knowledge of the mutual relations of the different parts of the Universe and a familiarity with the wonderful phenomena of Nature. From the study of astrology astronomy was evolved; from alchemy, chemistry; from geomancy, geography; from magic, natural philosophy. The principles of government by law were established. Anthropomorphism was discarded. It was no longer attempted to control the inexorable operation of physical agencies by prayers and incantations. In one especially important respect the Moslems differed from their European predecessors. The Roman system and the Gothic polity were founded entirely upon force; Arabic power was largely controlled by intellectual conditions.