the mental degradation produced when that system was at its height. Many
of the noblest philosophical and scientific works of antiquity
disappeared from the language in which they had been written, and were
only recovered, for the use of later and better ages, from translations
which the Saracens had made into Arabic. The insolent assumption of
wisdom by those who held the sword crushed every intellectual
aspiration. Yet, though triumphant for a time, this policy necessarily
contained the seeds of its own ignominious destruction. A day must
inevitably come when so grievous a wrong to the human race must be
exposed, and execrated, and punished--a day in which the poems of Homer
might once more be read, the immortal statues of the Greek sculptors
find worshippers, and the demonstrations of Euclid a consenting
intellect. But that unfortunate, that audacious policy of usurpation
once entered upon, there was no going back. He who is infallible must
needs be immutable. In its very nature the action implied compulsion,
compulsion implied the possession of power, and the whole policy insured
an explosion the moment that the means of compression should be weak.

[Sidenote: Bigotry of the first Saracens.]

[Sidenote: The nobler policy soon pursued.]

It is said that when the Saracens captured Alexandria, their victorious
general sent to the khalif to know his pleasure respecting the library.
The answer was in the spirit of the age. "If the books be confirmatory
of the Koran, they are superfluous; if contradictory, they are
pernicious. Let them be burnt." At this moment, to all human appearance,
the Mohammedan autocrat was on the point of joining in the evil policy
of the Byzantine sovereign. But fortunately it was but the impulse of a
moment, rectified forthwith, and a noble course of action was soon
pursued. The Arab incorporated into his literature the wisdom of those
he had conquered. In thus conceding to knowledge a free and
unembarrassed career, and, instead of repressing, encouraging to the
utmost all kinds of learning did the Koran take any harm? It was a high
statesmanship which, almost from the beginning of the impulse from
Mecca, bound down to a narrow, easily comprehended, and easily expressed
dogma the exacted belief, and in all other particulars let the human
mind go free.

[Sidenote: The true causes of the preceding events.]

In the preceding paragraphs I have criticized the course of events,
condemning or appl