COSMOS, VOL. II - World eBook Library

582 COSMOS.
in the short space of seventy years, over Egypt, Gyrene, and
Carthage, through the whole of Northern Asia to the far
remote western peninsula of Iberia. The inconsiderable
degree of cultivation possessed by the people and their
leaders, might certainly incline us to expect every demonstration
of rude barbarism, but the mythical account of the
burning of the Alexandrian Library by Amru, including the
account of its application during six months, as fuel to heat
4000 bathing rooms, rests on the sole testimony of two
writers who lived 580 years after the alleged occurrence took
place.* We need not here describe how, in more peaceful
times, during the brilliant epoch of Al-Mansur, Haroun Al-
Raschid, Mamun, and Motasem, the courts of princes, and
public scientific institutions, were enabled to draw together
large numbers of the most distinguished men, although without
imparting a freer development to the mental culture of
the mass of the people. It is not my object in the present work
to give a characteristic sketch of the far extended and variously
developed literature of the Arabs, or to distinguish the elements
that spring from the hidden depths of the organization
of races, and the natural unfolding of their character,
from those which are owing to external inducements and
accidental controlling causes. The solution of this important
problem belongs to another sphere of ideas, whilst our historical
considerations are limited to a fragmentary enumeration
of the various elements which have contributed in mathema-
tical, astronomical, and physical science, towards the diffusion
of a more general contemplation of the universe amongst
the Arabs.
Alchemy, magic, and mystic fancies, deprived by scholastic
phraseology of all poetic charm, corrupted here, as
elsewhere, in the middle ages, the true results cf enquiry;
but still the Arabs have enlarged the views of nature, and
given origin to many new elements of knowledge, by their indefatigable
and independent labours, -while, by means of careful
translations into their own tongue, they have appropriated
to
themselves the fruits of the labours of earlier cultivated
* Gibbon, vol. ix. chap. 51, p. 392; Heeren, Gesch. des Studiums der
classisclien Litteratur, bd. i. 1797, s. 44 und 72; Sacy, Abd-Allatif,
p. 240; Parthey, Das alexandrinische Museum, 1838, s. 106.