All races and all generations have had some kind of culture, but within the recorded history of humanity, certain peoples and certain centuries stand out most distinctly as influencing its evolution. Thus, the Greeks of the fourth and fifth centuries before Christ gathered together and handed down to us all manner of speculation about the nature of the universe, all manner of hypothetical answers to the eternal questions--Whence do we come, What are we doing, Where do we go?--and this was the foundation of modern philosophy and metaphysics. From the same Greeks came our geometry and the rudiments of our sciences of astronomy and medicine. It was they who gave us the model for nearly every form of literature--dramatic, epic, and lyric poetry, dialogues, oratory, history--and in their well-proportioned temples, in their balanced columns and elaborate friezes, in their marble chiselings of the perfect human form, they fashioned for us forever the classical expression of art. [Sidenote: Roman Culture] Still in ancient times, the Romans developed classical architecture in the great triumphal arches and in the high-domed public buildings which strewed their empire. They adapted the fine forms of Greek literature to their own more pompous, but less subtle, Latin language. They devised a code of law and a legal system which made them in a real sense the teachers of order and the founders of the modern study of law. [Sidenote: Mohammedan Culture] The Mohammedans, too, at the very time when the Christians of western Europe were neglecting much of the ancient heritage, kept alive the traditions of Greek philosophy, mathematics, astronomy, and medicine. From eastern Asia they borrowed algebra, the Arabic numerals, and the compass, and, in their own great cities of Bagdad, Damascus, and Cordova, they themselves developed the curiously woven curtains and rugs, the strangely wrought blades and metallic ornaments, the luxurious dwellings and graceful minarets which distinguish Arabic or Mohammedan art. [Sidenote: Medieval Culture]