Volume II Part 2 (2/2)

[Sidenote: Traces the course of a ray of light through the air.] He is perfectly aware that the atmosphere decreases in density with increase of height; and from that consideration he shows that a ray of light, entering it obliquely, follows a curvilinear path which is concave toward the earth; and that, since the mind refers the position of an object to the direction in which the ray of light from it enters the eye, the result must be an illusion as respects the starry bodies; they appear to us, to use the Arabic term, nearer to the _zenith_ than they actually are, and not in their true place. [Sidenote: Astronomical refraction.] We see them in the direction of the tangent to the curve of refraction as it reaches the eye. Hence also he shows that we actually see the stars, and the sun, and the moon before they have risen and after they have set--a wonderful illusion. He shows that in its pa.s.sage through the air the curvature of a ray increases with the increasing density, and that its path does not depend on vapours that chance to be present, but on the variation of density in the medium. [Sidenote: The horizontal sun and moon.] To this refraction he truly refers the shortening, in their vertical diameter, of the horizontal sun and moon; to its variations he imputes the twinkling of the fixed stars. The apparent increase of size of the former bodies when they are in the horizon he refers to a mental deception, arising from the presence of intervening terrestrial objects. [Sidenote: Explains the twilight.] He shows that the effect of refraction is to shorten the duration of night and darkness by prolonging the visibility of the sun, and considering the reflecting action of the air, he deduces that beautiful explanation of the nature of twilight--the light that we perceive before the rising and after the setting of the sun--which we accept at the present time as true. [Sidenote: Determines the height of the atmosphere.] With extraordinary acuteness, he applies the principles with which he is dealing to the determination of the height of the atmosphere, deciding that its limit is nearly 58-1/2 miles.

All this is very grand. Shall we compare it with the contemporaneous monk miracles and monkish philosophy of Europe? It would make a profound impression if communicated for the first time to a scientific society in our own age. Nor perhaps does his merit end here. If the Book of the Balance of Wisdom, for a translation of which we are indebted to M.

Khanikoff, the Russian consul-general at Tabriz, be the production of Alhazen, of which there seems to be internal proof, it offers us evidence of a singular clearness in mechanical conception for which we should scarcely have been prepared, and, if it be not his, at all events it indisputably shows the scientific acquirements of his age. [Sidenote: The weight of the air.] In that book is plainly set forth the connexion between the weight of the atmosphere and its increasing density. The weight of the atmosphere was therefore understood before Torricelli.

This author shows that a body will weigh differently in a rare and in a dense atmosphere; that its loss of weight will be greater in proportion as the air is more dense. [Sidenote: Principles of hydrostatics.] He considers the force with which plunged bodies will rise through heavier media in which they are immersed, and discusses the submergence of floating bodies, as s.h.i.+ps upon the sea. He understands the doctrine of the centre of gravity. [Sidenote: Theory of the balance.] He applies it to the investigation of balances and steelyards, showing the relations between the centre of gravity and the centre of suspension--when those instruments will set and when they will vibrate. He recognizes gravity as a force; a.s.serts that it diminishes with the distance; but falls into the mistake that the diminution is as the distance, and not as its square. [Sidenote: Gravity; capillary attraction; the hydrometer.] He considers gravity as terrestrial, and fails to perceive that it is universal--that was reserved for Newton. He knows correctly the relation between the velocities, s.p.a.ces, and times of falling bodies, and has very distinct ideas of capillary attraction. He improves the construction of that old Alexandrian invention, the hydrometer--the instrument which, in a letter to his fair but pagan friend Hypatia, the good Bishop of Ptolemais, Synesius, six hundred years previously, requests her to have made for him in Alexandria, as he wishes to try the wines he is using, his health being a little delicate. [Sidenote: Tables of specific gravities.] The determinations of the densities of bodies, as given by Alhazen, approach very closely to our own; in the case of mercury they are even more exact than some of those of the last century.

I join, as, doubtless, all natural philosophers will do, in the pious prayer of Alhazen, that, in the day of judgment, the All-Merciful will take pity on the soul of Abur-Raihan, because he was the first of the race of men to construct a table of specific gravities; and I will ask the same for Alhazen himself, since he was the first to trace the curvilinear path of a ray of light through the air. Though more than seven centuries part him from our times, the physiologists of this age may accept him as their compeer, since he received and defended the doctrine now forcing its way, of the progressive development of animal forms. [Sidenote: The theory of development of organisms.] He upheld the affirmation of those who said that man, in his progress, pa.s.ses through a definite succession of states; not, however, ”that he was once a bull, and was then changed to an a.s.s, and afterwards into a horse, and after that into an ape, and finally became a man.” This, he says, is only a misrepresentation by ”common people” of what is really meant. The ”common people” who withstood Alhazen have representatives among us, themselves the only example in the Fauna of the world of that non-development which they so loudly affirm. At the best they are only pa.s.sing through some of the earlier forms of that series of trans.m.u.tations to which the devout Mohammedan in the above quotation alludes.

The Arabians, with all this physical knowledge, do not appear to have been in possession of the thermometer, though they knew the great importance of temperature measures, employing the areometer for that purpose. They had detected the variation in density of liquids by heat, but not the variation in volume. In their measures of time they were more successful; they had several kinds of clepsydras. A balance clepsydra is described in the work from which I am quoting. [Sidenote: The pendulum clock.] But it was their great astronomer, Ebn Junis, who accomplished the most valuable of all chronometric improvements. He first applied the pendulum to the measure of time. Laplace, in the fifth note to his Systeme du Monde, avails himself of the observations of this philosopher, with those of Albategnius and other Arabians, as incontestable proof of the diminution of the eccentricity of the earth's...o...b..t. [Sidenote: Astronomical works of Ebn Junis.] He states, moreover, that the observation of Ebn Junis of the obliquity of the ecliptic, properly corrected for parallax and refraction, gives for the year A.D.

1000 a result closely approaching to the theoretical. He also mentions another observation of Ebn Junis, October 31, A.D. 1007, as of much importance in reference to the great inequalities of Jupiter and Saturn.

[Sidenote: The Arabic numerals.] I have already remarked that, in the writings of this great Arabian, the Arabic numerals and our common arithmetical processes are currently used. From Africa and Spain they pa.s.sed into Italy, finding ready acceptance among commercial men, who recognised at once their value, and, as William of Malmesbury says, being a wonderful relief to the ”sweating calculators;” an epithet of which the correctness will soon appear to any one who will try to do a common multiplication or division problem by the aid of the old Roman numerals. It is said that Gerbert--Pope Sylvester--was the first to introduce a knowledge of them into Europe; he had learned them at the Mohammedan university of Cordova. It is in allusion to the cipher, which follows the 9, but which, added to any of the other digits, increases by tenfold its power, that, in a letter to his patron, the Emperor Otho III., with humility he playfully but truly says, ”I am like the last of all the numbers.”

[Sidenote: Arabian philosophy.] The overthrow of the Roman by the Arabic numerals foreshadowed the result of a far more important--a political--contest between those rival names. But, before showing how the Arabian intellect pressed upon Rome, and the convulsive struggles of desperation which Rome made to resist it, I must for a moment consider the former under another point of view, and speak of Saracen philosophy.

[Sidenote: The writings of Algazzali.] And here Algazzali shall be my guide. He was born A.D. 1058.

Let us hear him speak for himself. He is relating his attempt to detach himself from the opinions which he had imbibed in his childhood: ”I said to myself, 'My aim is simply to know the truth of things; consequently, it is indispensable for me to ascertain what is knowledge.' Now it was evident to me that certain knowledge must be that which explains the object to be known in such a manner that no doubt can remain, so that in future all error and conjecture respecting it must be impossible.

[Sidenote: The cert.i.tude of knowledge.] Not only would the understanding then need no efforts to be convinced of cert.i.tude, but security against error is in such close connexion with knowledge, that, even were an apparent proof of falsehood to be brought forward, it would cause no doubt, because no suspicion of error would be possible. Thus, when I have acknowledged ten to be more than three, if any one were to say, 'On the contrary, three is more than ten, and to prove the truth of my a.s.sertion, I will change this rod into a serpent,' and if he were to change it, my conviction of his error would remain unshaken. His manoeuvre would only produce in me admiration for his ability. I should not doubt my own knowledge.

”Then was I convinced that knowledge which I did not possess in this manner, and respecting which I had not this certainty, could inspire me with neither confidence nor a.s.surance; and no knowledge without a.s.surance deserves the name of knowledge.

”Having examined the state of my own knowledge, I found it divested of all that could be said to have these qualities, unless perceptions of the senses and irrefragable principles were to be considered such.

[Sidenote: Fallibility of the senses.] I then said to myself, 'Now, having fallen into this despair, the only hope of acquiring incontestable convictions is by the perceptions of the senses and by necessary truths.' Their evidence seemed to me to be indubitable. I began, however, to examine the objects of sensation and speculation, to see if they possibly could admit of doubt. Then doubts crowded upon me in such numbers that my incert.i.tude became complete. Whence results the confidence I have in sensible things? The strongest of all our senses is sight; and yet, looking at a shadow, and perceiving it to be fixed and immovable, we judge it to be deprived of movement; nevertheless, experience teaches us that, when we return to the same place an hour after, the shadow is displaced, for it does not vanish suddenly, but gradually, little by little, so as never to be at rest. If we look at the stars, they seem to be as small as money-pieces; but mathematical proofs convince us that they are larger than the earth. These and other things are judged by the senses, but rejected by reason as false. I abandoned the senses, therefore, having seen all my confidence in their truth shaken.

”'Perhaps,' said I, 'there is no a.s.surance but in the notions of reason, that is to say, first principles, as that ten is more than three; the same thing cannot have been created and yet have existed from all eternity; to exist and not to exist at the same time is impossible.'

[Sidenote: Fallibility of reason.] ”Upon this the senses replied, 'What a.s.surance have you that your confidence in reason is not of the same nature as your confidence in us? When you relied on us, reason stepped in and gave us the lie; had not reason been there, you would have continued to rely on us. Well, may there not exist some other judge superior to reason, who, if he appeared, would refute the judgments of reason in the same way that reason refuted us? The non-appearance of such a judge is no proof of his non-existence.'

[Sidenote: The nature of dreams.] ”I strove in vain to answer the objection, and my difficulties increased when I came to reflect on sleep. I said to myself, 'During sleep, you give to visions a reality and consistence, and you have no suspicion of their untruth. On awakening, you are made aware that they were nothing but visions. What a.s.surance have you that all you feel and know when you are awake does actually exist? It is all true as respects your condition at that moment; but it is nevertheless possible that another condition should present itself which should be to your awakened state that which to your awakened state is now to you sleep; so that, as respects this higher condition, your waking is but sleep.'”

It would not be possible to find in any European work a clearer statement of the scepticism to which philosophy leads than what is thus given by this Arabian. Indeed, it is not possible to put the argument in a more effective way. His perspicuity is in singular contrast with the obscurity of many metaphysical writers.

[Sidenote: Intellectual despair.] ”Reflecting on my situation, I found myself bound to this world by a thousand ties, temptations a.s.sailing me on all sides. I then examined my actions. The best were those relating to instruction and education, and even there I saw myself given up to unimportant sciences, all useless in another world. Reflecting on the aim of my teaching, I found it was not pure in the sight of the Lord. I saw that all my efforts were directed toward the acquisition of glory to myself. Having, therefore, distributed my wealth, I left Bagdad and retired into Syria, where I remained two years in solitary struggle with my soul, combating my pa.s.sions, and exercising myself, in the purification of my heart and in preparation for the other world.”

This is a very beautiful picture of the mental struggles and the actions of a truthful and earnest man. In all this the Christian philosopher can sympathize with the devout Mohammedan. After all, they are not very far apart. Algazzali is not the only one to whom such thoughts have occurred, but he has found words to tell his experience better than any other man. And what is the conclusion at which he arrives? [Sidenote: Algazzali's ages of man.] The life of man, he says, is marked by three stages: ”the first, or infantile stage, is that of pure sensation; the second, which begins at the age of seven, is that of understanding; the third is that of reason, by means of which the intellect perceives the necessary, the possible, the absolute, and all those higher objects which transcend the understanding. But after this there is a fourth stage, when another eye is opened, by which man perceives things hidden from others--perceives all that will be--perceives the things that escape the perceptions of reason, as the objects of reason escape the understanding, and as the objects of the understanding escape the sensitive faculty. This is prophetism.” Algazzali thus finds a philosophical basis for the rule of life, and reconciles religion and philosophy.

And now I have to turn from Arabian civilized life, its science, its philosophy, to another, a repulsive state of things. With reluctance I come back to the Italian system, defiling the holy name of religion with its intrigues, its bloodshed, its oppression of human thought, its hatred of intellectual advancement. [Sidenote: Renewal of the operation of Mohammedan influences.] Especially I have now to direct attention to two countries, the scenes of important events--countries in which the Mohammedan influences began to take effect and to press upon Rome. These are the South of France and Sicily.

Innocent III. had been elected pope at the early age of thirty-seven years, A.D. 1198. The papal power had reached its culminating point. The weapons of the Church had attained their utmost force. In Italy, in Germany, in France and England, interdicts and excommunications vindicated the pontifical authority, as in the cases of the Duke of Ravenna, the Emperor Otho, Philip Augustus of France, King John of England. [Sidenote: Interference of Innocent III. in France.] In each of these cases it was not for the sake of sustaining great moral principles or the rights of humanity that the thunder was launched--it was in behalf of temporary political interests; interests that, in Germany, were sustained at the cost of a long war, and cemented by a.s.sa.s.sination; in France, strengthened by the well-tried device of an intervention in a matrimonial broil--the domestic quarrel of the king and queen about Agnes of Meran. ”Ah! happy Saladin!” said the insulted Philip, when his kingdom was put under interdict; ”he has no pope above him. I too will turn Mohammedan.”

[Sidenote: In Spain and Portugal.] So, likewise, in Spain, Innocent interfered in the matrimonial life of the King of Leon. The remorseless venality of the papal government was felt in every direction. Portugal had already been advanced to the dignity of a kingdom on payment of an annual tribute to Rome. The King of Aragon held his kingdom as feudatory to the pope.

[Sidenote: In England; denounces Magna Charta.] In England, Innocent's interference a.s.sumed a different aspect. He attempted to a.s.sert his control over the Church in spite of the king, and put the nation under interdict because John would not permit Stephen Langton to be Archbishop of Canterbury. It was utterly impossible that affairs could go on with such an empire within an empire. For his contumacy, John was excommunicated; but, base as he was, he defied his punishment for four years. Hereupon his subjects were released from their allegiance, and his kingdom offered to anyone who would conquer it. In his extremity, the King of England is said to have sent a messenger to Spain, offering to become a Mohammedan. The religious sentiment was then no higher in him than it was, under a like provocation, in the King of France, whose thoughts turned in the same direction. But, pressed irresistibly by Innocent, John was compelled to surrender his realm, agreeing to pay to the pope, in addition to Peter's pence, 1000 marks a year as a token of va.s.salage. When the prelates whom he had refused or exiled returned, he was compelled to receive them on his knees--humiliations which aroused the indignation of the stout English barons, and gave strength to those movements which ended in extorting Magna Charta. Never, however, was Innocent more mistaken than in the character of Stephen Langton. John had, a second time, formally surrendered his realm to the pope, and done homage to the legate for it; but Stephen Langton was the first--at a meeting of the chiefs of the revolt against the king, held in London, August 25th, 1213--to suggest that they should demand a renewal of the charter of Henry I. From this suggestion Magna Charta originated. Among the miracles of the age, he was the greatest miracle of all; his patriotism was stronger than his profession. The wrath of the pontiff knew no bounds when he learned that the Great Charter had been conceded.

In his bull, he denounced it as base and ignominious; he anathematized the king if he observed it; he declared it null and void. It was not the policy of the Roman court to permit so much as the beginnings of such freedom. The appointment of Simon Langton to the archbishopric of York was annulled. One De Gray was subst.i.tuted for him. It ill.u.s.trated the simony into which the papal government had fallen, that De Gray had become, in these transactions, indebted to Rome ten thousand pounds.

[Sidenote: The drain of money from that country.] In fact, through the operation of the Crusades, all Europe was tributory to the pope. He had his fiscal agents in every metropolis; his travelling ones wandering in all directions, in every country, raising revenue by the sale of dispensations for all kinds of offences, real and fict.i.tious--money for the sale of appointments, high and low--a steady drain of money from every realm. Fifty years after the time of which we are speaking, Robert Grostete, the Bishop of Lincoln and friend of Roger Bacon, caused to be ascertained the amount received by foreign ecclesiastics in England. He found it to be thrice the income of the king himself. This was on the occasion of Innocent IV. demanding provision to be made for three hundred additional Italian clergy by the Church of England, and that one of his nephews--a mere boy--should have a stall in Lincoln cathedral.

[Sidenote: Goading of Europe into a new crusade.] While thus Innocent III. was interfering and intriguing with every court, and laying every people under tribute, he did not for a moment permit his attention to be diverted from the Crusades, the singular advantages of which to the papacy had now been fully discovered. They had given to the pope a suzerainty in Europe, the control of its military as well as its monetary resources. Not that a man like Innocent could permit himself to be deluded by any hopes of eventual success. The crusades must inevitably prove, so far as their avowed object was concerned, a failure. The Christian inhabitants of Palestine were degraded and demoralized beyond description. Their ranks were thinned by apostasy to Mohammedanism. In Europe, not only the laity begun to discover that the money provided for the wars in the Holy Land was diverted from its purpose, and in some inexplicable manner, found its way into Italy--even the clergy could not conceal their suspicions that the proclamation of a crusade was merely the preparation for a swindle. Nevertheless, Innocent pressed forward his schemes, goading on Christendom by upbraiding it with the taunts of the Saracens. ”Where,” they say, ”is your G.o.d, who can not deliver you out of our hands? Behold! we have defiled your sanctuaries; we have stretched forth our arm; we have taken at the first a.s.sault, we hold in despite of you, those your desirable places, where your superst.i.tion had its beginning. Where is your G.o.d? Let him arise and protect you and himself.” ”If thou be the Son of G.o.d, save thyself if thou canst; redeem the land of thy birth from our hands. Restore thy cross, that we have taken, to the wors.h.i.+ppers of the Cross.” With great difficulty, however, Innocent succeeded in preparing the fourth crusade, A.D. 1202. The Venetians consented to furnish a fleet of transports. But the expedition was quickly diverted from its true purpose; the Venetians employing the Crusaders for the capture of Zara from the King of Hungary. [Sidenote: The crusade is used for the seizure of Constantinople.] Still worse, and shameful to be said--partly from the l.u.s.t of plunder, and partly through ecclesiastical machinations--it again turned aside for an attack upon Constantinople, and took that city by storm A.D. 1204, thereby establis.h.i.+ng Latin Christianity in the Eastern metropolis, but, alas! with bloodshed, rape, and fire. On the night of the a.s.sault more houses were burned than could be found in any three of the largest cities in France. [Sidenote: Sack of that city by the Catholics.] Even Christian historians compare with shame the storming of Constantinople by the Catholics with the capture of Jerusalem by Saladin. Pope Innocent himself was compelled to protest against enormities that had outrun his intentions. He says: ”They practised fornications, incests, adulteries in the sight of men. They abandoned matrons and virgins, consecrated to G.o.d, to the lewdness of grooms. They lifted their hands against the treasures of the churches--what is more heinous, the very consecrated vessels--tearing the tablets of silver from the very altars, breaking in pieces the most sacred things, carrying off crosses and relics.” In St. Sophia, the silver was stripped from the pulpit; an exquisite and highly-prized table of oblation was broken in pieces; the sacred chalices were turned into drinking-cups; the gold fringe was ripped off the veil of the sanctuary. a.s.ses and horses were led into the churches to carry off the spoil. A prost.i.tute mounted the patriarch's throne, and sang, with indecent gestures, a ribald song. The tombs of the emperors were rifled; and the Byzantines saw, at once with amazement and anguish, the corpse of Justinian--which even decay and putrefaction had for six centuries spared in his tomb--exposed to the violation of a mob. It had been understood among those who instigated these atrocious proceedings that the relics were to be brought into a common stock and equitably divided among the conquerors! but each ecclesiastic seized and secreted whatever he could. The idolatrous state of the Eastern Church is ill.u.s.trated by some of these relics. [Sidenote: The relics found there,] Thus the Abbot Martin obtained for his monastery in Alsace the following inestimable articles: 1. A spot of the blood of our Saviour; 2. A piece of the true cross; 3. The arm of the Apostle James; 4. Part of the skeleton of John the Baptist; 5.--I hesitate to write such blasphemy--”A bottle of the milk of the Mother of G.o.d!” [Sidenote: and works of art destroyed.] In contrast with the treasures thus acquired may be set relics of a very different kind, the remains of ancient art which they destroyed: 1. The bronze charioteers from the Hippodrome; 2. The she-wolf suckling Romulus and Remus; 3. A group of a Sphinx, river-horse, and crocodile; 4. An eagle tearing a serpent; 5. An a.s.s and his driver, originally cast by Augustus in memory of the victory of Actium; 6. Bellerophon and Pegasus; 7. A bronze obelisk; 8. Paris presenting the apple to Venus; 9. An exquisite statute of Helen; 10. The Hercules of Lysippus; 11. A Juno, formerly taken from the temple at Samos. The bronzes were melted into coin, and thousands of ma.n.u.scripts and parchments were burned. From that time the works of many ancient authors disappeared altogether.

[Sidenote: The pope and the doge divide the spoil.] With well-dissembled regret, Innocent took the new order of things in the city of Constantinople under his protection. The bishop of Rome at last appointed the Bishop of Constantinople. The acknowledgment of papal supremacy was complete. Rome and Venice divided between them the ill-gotten gains of their undertaking. If anything had been wanting to open the eyes of Europe, surely what had thus occurred should have been enough. The pope and the doge--the trader in human credulity and the trader of the Adriatic--had shared the spoils of a crusade meant by religious men for the relief of the Holy Land. [Sidenote: Works of art carried to Venice.] The bronze horses, once brought by Augustus from Alexandria, after his victory over Antony and transferred from Rome to Constantinople by its founder, were set before the Church of St Mark.

They were the outward and visible sign of a less obvious event that was taking place. For to Venice was brought a residue of the literary treasures that had escaped the fire and the destroyer; and while her comrades in the outrage were satisfied, in their ignorance, with fict.i.tious relics, she took possession of the poor remnant of the glorious works of art, of letters, and of science. Through these was hastened the intellectual progress of the West.

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