A CULTURED RACE.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 16714, 21 April 1922, Page 6

A CULTURED RACE.

EUROPE’S DEBT TO THE ARABS. WHEN THE WEST WAS ILLITERATE. One of the principal benefits to be derived from the intelligent reading of history is tho knowledge of what almost every country and every race owe to almost every other country and every other race (writes Sidney Dark in “ John o’ London s Weekly.”). History is something more man the story or ambitions, futile quarrels and jealousies, and generally indecisive battles it is a demonstration oi the part that each division oi mankind has piayed in tlie drama of progress. Europeans now always are apt to regard the Arab w ith condescending patronage as one ot the backward races. It is perhaps not generally recognised that we owe a great debt to the Arabs. In ** The Outline of “ History, - ” Mr H. G. Veils says:— If the Greek was the father, then the Arab was tli© foster-father ot the scien tific method of dealing with reality—that is to say, by absolute frankness the utmost simplicity of statement and explanation, exact record, and exhaus tive criticism. Through the Arabs it was, and not by the Latin route, that the modern world received that gift cf light and power. DARK AGES. After the break-up of the Roman Empire, at the end oi the fourth century, Western Europe passed into the Dark Ages, a period ot ignorance and stagnation that, according to Hallam, lasted a thousand years. 1. again quote Mr Wells It is frequently said that Europe in the sixth and seventh centuries relapsed into barbarism, but that does not ex press tlie reality of the case very well Barbarism is a social order of an elementary type, orderly within its limits; the state of Europe beneath its political fragmentation was a social disordei. Its morale was not that- of a kraal, but that of a slum. 111 a savage kraal a savage knows that he belongs to a community, and lives and acts accordingly in a slum, tho individual neither knows of nor acts in relation to any greater bein£. There were, of course, many glimmerings of light before the Dark Ages finished with the Renaissance and the Revival of Learning, but from the year \ D 400 to about the middle of the fifteenth century Western Europe compared with ancient Greece ns the England of to-day compares with the England of the PlantAgenetsgone east. Greek culture and Greek learning were not lost. They had travelled east. In the fourth century Alexandria had become the centre of Greek learning, the home of the NeoPlatonio philosophers. Readers ot Charles Kingsley’s novel “ Hypatia ” will remember the bitter quarrels between the Greek philosophers of Alexandria and the rude Christian monks, who regarded learning and knowledge as things of the devil. Alexandria retained its pre-eminent intellectual position until its capture by the Muslima in the seventh century. Its educational influence spread all through Syria and Persia, and the Syrians and tho Persians thus became the spiritual heirs of Greece.

In his interesting book, “ Arabic Thought and Its Place in History’,” Dr O’Leary says:—“Medical studies were especially attached to the school of Alexandria. Philosophy proper had been so largely' taken over by theology that the secular investigators were rather impelled to turn to the natural sciences, and as a centre of medical and allied studies the ancient school of Alexandria continued its development without loss of continuity, but under changed conditions.” HOW CULTURE TRAVELS. Dr O’Leary gives one striking instance of liow culture is handed on from hand to hand through the ages: —“ The Persian armies returning from the invasion of Syria brought back many items of Hellenic culture, amongst them the Greek system oi baths, which was copied m Persia and continued by tho Muslims, who spread this refinement throughout the Islamic world; so that what we call the Turkish bath is a lineal descendant of the old Greek bath passed through the Persians of pre-Muslim times, and then spread more widely by the Muslims.” Early in the seventh century the Mohammedan Arabs began to overrun the Near East. Syria and Persia passed under their sway, and from the Syrians and the Persians the Arabs borrowed the knowledge derived in the first place from the Greeks. All Muslim art. Dr O’Leary’ tells us, had a Byzantine beginning, and Muslim theology and Muslim metaphysics were greatly affected by the Greek philosophers. By the end of the eighth century “ th© Arab-speaking world possessed Arabic translations of the greater part ot the works of Aristotle, of the lead ing Neo-Platonic commentators, of some of tho works of Plato, of the greater part of the works of Galen, and portions of other medical writers and their commentators, as well as of other Greek scientific works and of various Indian and Persian writings.” This, remember, was at a time when ninety per cent of the population of Western Europe was entirely illiterate, and when such universities us Western Europe possessed were given up to theological hair splitting. The Arabs translated Euclid, and we owe algebra to them. MOORS IN SPAIN. In the year 714 the Arabs and Moors had won nearly all Spain. In 720 their attempt to overrun France was brought to an end by Charles Martel; but they remained in Spain for nearly 800 years. The Muslim rulers in Spain (I quote Dr O’Leary) were tolerant, and made free use of Greek and Jewish officials. From th© University of Cordova Arab-preserved learning passed to Padua and th© universities of North-East Italy, and unquestionably, as I>r O’Leary says, prepared the way for the Renaissance. It is a curious fact that at the University of Toledo Latin translations of the Arabic versions of Aristotle were made for the use of students in Padua, Paris, and Oxford. Constantinople fell in the year 1453, and that event is easily taken as the beginning of the Revival of Learning. Greek scholars escaped West from Constantinople. and their arrival in the West brought about a renewed interest in things of the mind. But this great event had been prepared for 0.7 the Arabic scholars who had brought Greek culture by Northern Africa and Spain into Italy, where 200 years ear Her St Thomas Aquinas had studied Aristotle with the help of the Arab