Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/105

Rh period of the Seleucides, has furnished criticism with enigmas which cannot be explained; for those natural deductions, which are so sure a guide, in considering honest productions of the mind, are entirely at fault, when dealing with these equivocal and artificial compositions, the fruit of enfeebled reason and sordid passions.

To the best of my belief, then, a very limited range must be assigned to the Nabathæan school. This school presents to us the last phase of Babylonian literature, that which extends from the first centuries of our era, or, if you will, from the period of the Seleucides or Arsacides, to the Mussulman invasion. This literature, stricken to death by Islámism, dragged out a miserable existence during the Middle Ages, among the poor sect of the Sabians, Nazoreans, or Christians of St. John, and sank to an unheard-of degree of degradation and extravagance in their writings. The works translated by Ibn Wahshíya, and the books of the Mendaïtes, are to us productions of one and