Page:Islam, Turkey, and Armenia, and How They Happened.djvu/124

118 republic of Raguza, were vassal states. Also diplomatic and commercial relations subsisted between the Porte and the leading powers of Christendom.

5. Decline and Its Causes. Though the Turks benefited by the political disadvantages of the surrounding nations, and encouraged by the mutual jealousy and selfishness of the so-called Christian powers had made themselves a name and built up a colossal power, they were destitute of the qualities which alone give honor to greatness and can secure permanence to success. The discipline of the seraglio (Turkish palace) was fatal to a succession of able rulers. The princes of blood, confined within its walls and separated from general society, deprived of every honorable ambition, with eunuchs for their teachers and slaves for their companions, resigned themselves to guilty pleasures to dissipate the tedium of such an existence, and were only fitted, if raised to the throne, to act the part of timid puppets or unmanly tyrants.

The genius of Mohametanism, by the vain claims of superiority and its stern fatalism, contributed much to retain the Turks in a stationary condition, which necessarily became one of increasing inferiority in comparison with the other nations of Europe. Educated in a creed which confines the intellect to the Koran and inspires sovereign contempt for nations, arts and institutions without the pale of Islam, resigned to the belief that all events happen by inevitable necessity, an arrest was laid upon intellectual cultivation.