Page:Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire vol 6 (1897).djvu/47

 OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE 27 of those voluntary champions who had crowded to the standard of Abubeker and Omar for the hopes of spoil and of paradise. Under the reign of the Ommiades, the studies of the Moslems introduction were confined to the interpretation of the Koran, and the among the eloquence and poetry of their native tongue. A people con- ad. 754, '&c., tinually exposed to the dangers of the field must esteem the healing powers of medicine or rather of surgery ; but the starving physicians of Arabia murmured a complaint that exercise and temperance deprived them of the greatest part of their practice.*^^ After their civil and domestic wars, the subjects of the Ab- bassides, awakening from this mental lethargy, found leisure and felt curiosity for the acquisition of profane science. This spirit was first encouraged by the caliph Almansor, who, besides his knowledge of the Mahometan law, had applied himself with success to the study of astronomy. But, when the sceptre de- volved to Almamon, the seventh of the Abbassides, he completed the designs of his grandfather, and invited the muses from their ancient seats. His ambassadors at Constantinople, his agents in Armenia, Syria, and Egypt, collected the volumes of Grecian science ; at his command they were translated by the most skilful interpreters into the Arabic language ; his subjects were exhorted assiduously to peruse these instructive writings ; and the suc- cessor of Mahomet assisted with pleasure and modesty at the assemblies and disputations of the learned. " He was not igno- rant," says Abulpharagius, "that theij are the elect of God, his best and most useful servants, whose lives are devoted to the improvement of their rational faculties. The mean ambition of the Chinese or the Turks may glory in the industry of their hands or the indulgence of their brutal appetites. Yet these dexterous artists must view, with hopeless emulation, the hexa- gons and pyramids of the cells of a bee-hive : '"- these fortitudinous •"i The Gulistan (p. 239) relates the conversation of Mahomet and a physician (Epistol. Renaudot. in Fabricius, Bibliot. Grsec. torn. i. p. 814). The prophet himself was skilled in the art of medicine; and Gagnier (Vie de Mahomet, torn, iii. p. 394-405) has given an extract of the aphorisms which are extant under his name. 82 See their curious architecture in Reaumur (Hist, des Insectes, tom. v. NK-moire viii.). These hexagons are closed by a pyramid ; the angles of the three sides of a similar pyramid, such as would accomplish the given end with the smallest quantity possible of materials, were determined by a mathematician, at 109 degrees 26 minutes for the larger, 70 degrees 34 minutes for the smaller. The actual measure is 109 degrees 28 minutes, 70 degrees 32 minutes. Yet this perfect harmony raises the work at the expense of the artist : the bees are not masters of transcendent geometry. [An attempt has recently been made to show that there is no dis- crepancy between the actual dimensions of the cells and the measures which would require the minimum of material.]