e arts have been
received from a people who pursued with relentless hostility the
religion and liberties of every other nation.

The Greeks were the most distinguished patrons of literature and
science. Among them philosophy found its earliest home, and the arts
are commonly supposed to have sprung up chiefly under their fostering
care, though modern researches have shown that much of their knowledge
was derived from still more ancient sources. Their {245} philosophy,
though greatly improved by them, was borrowed from the mysteries of the
Egyptian priests and the Persian magi. Their system of the universe,
which made the nearest approach to the more correct discoveries of
modern times, was previously known to the learned Hindus; and it may
admit of question whether their whole mythology, allowing for the
additions which a chastened and vivid imagination would make to it, had
not its prototype in some Asiatic religio-philosophical system. A
learned writer on the erudition of the Asiatics says, that the whole of
the theology of the Greeks, and part of the philosophy of modern
scientific research, may be found in the Hindu Vedas. He adds, "That
most subtile spirit which Newton suspected to pervade natural bodies,
and to lie concealed in them so as to cause attraction and repulsion,
the emission, reflection, and refraction of light, electricity,
calefaction, sensation, and muscular motion, is described by the Hindus
as a fifth element, endued with those very powers; and the Vedas abound
with allusions to a force universally attractive, which they chiefly
attribute to the sun." The extension, therefore, of the Arabian
victories over the Eastern world, and their entire command, after the
overthrow of the Greek empire, of the resources possessed by that
people, {246} gave them access to all the literary stores then in
existence.

It has been said, and probably not without good reason, that Mohammed
himself saw and felt the importance of literary distinction. Among the
sayings attributed to him, the following has been considered as
evincing his sense of the value of learning: "A mind without erudition
is like a body without a soul. Glory consists not in wealth, but in
knowledge;" and, as the Koran affords abundant proof, he was by no
means unmindful of that mental cultivation, of which the means were
within his reach. His immediate followers, occupied only with the
ideas of conquest and conversion, despised equally t