of whom it is
recorded that they made long journeys in order to get in touch with what
the Arabs had preserved of the old Greek civilization and culture. Among
them are such men as Michael Scot or Scotus, Matthew Platearius, who was
afterwards a great teacher at Salerno; Daniel Morley, Adelard of Bath,
Egidius, otherwise known as Gilles de Corbeil; Romoaldus, Gerbert of
Auvergne, who later became Pope under the name of Sylvester II; Gerard
of Cremona, and the best known of them all, at least in medicine,
Constantine Africanus, whose wanderings, however, were probably not
limited to Arabian lands, but who seems also to have been in Hindustan.

We are rather prone to think that this great spirit of going far afield
for knowledge's sake is recent, or, at least, quite modern. As a matter
of fact, one finds it everywhere in history. Long before Herodotus did
his wanderings there were many visitors who went to Egypt, and many more
later who went to Crete, and many more a few centuries later who went to
the shores of Asia Minor seeking for the precious pearl of knowledge,
and sometimes finding it without finding the even more precious pearl of
wisdom, "whose worth is from the farthest coasts."

To the Arabs we owe the foundation of a series of institutions for the
higher learning, like those which had existed around them in Asia Minor
and in Egypt at the time they made their conquests. Alexandria,
Pergamos, Cos, Cnidos, Tarsus, and many other Eastern cities had had
what we would call at least academies, and many of them deserved the
name of universities. The Arabs continued the tradition in education
that they found, and established educational institutions which
attracted wide attention. As we have said, the two most famous of these
were at Bagdad and at Cordova. Mostanser, the predecessor of the last
Caliph of the family of the Abbassides, built a handsome palace, in
which the academy of Bagdad was housed. It is still in existence, and
gives an excellent idea of the beneficent interest of this monarch and
of other of the Abbasside rulers in education. Its fate at the present
time is typical of the attitude of the Mohammedans towards education.
Though the building is still standing, the institution of learning is no
longer there. As Hyrtl remarks, it is not ideas that are exchanged in it
now, but articles of commerce. It has become the chief office of the
Turkish customs department in Bagdad.

These institutions of the high