A natural arrangement such as this cannot be interfered with or altered. Defective as it is from a human aspect, it is all the same irremediable--a hiatus as wide apart as the suns in space, beyond the power of human effort to bring together. It is only possible for the rational gospel of humanism, the great religion of natural sympathy, to heal the breach. This it can only do by turning humanity into one great human family. This alone would sweep away the disturbing factors of creeds, denominations, and sects. But is such a thing possible? Scarcely! Certainly not so long as the egotism and egotheism of man is so predominant a force in human sociology, or so long as the present physical and mental environments of the two sections remain the same. CHAPTER VIII EUROPE’S DEBT TO ISLAM: ETHNIC SPHERES OF INFLUENCE But apart from all these weighty considerations, the attitude of Europe towards Islam should be one of eternal gratitude, instead of base ingratitude and forgetfulness. Never to this day has Europe acknowledged in an honest and whole-hearted manner the great and everlasting debt she owes to Islamic culture and civilization. Only in a lukewarm and perfunctory way has she recognized that when, during the Dark Ages, her people were sunk in feudalism and ignorance, Moslem civilization under the Arabs reached a high standard of social and scientific splendour, that kept alive the flickering embers of European society from utter decadence. Do not we, who now consider ourselves on the topmost pinnacle ever reached by culture and civilization, recognize that had it not been for the high culture, the civilization and intellectual as well as social splendour of the Arabs, and to the soundness of their school system, Europe would to this day have remained sunk in the darkness of ignorance? Have we forgotten that the Mohammedan maxim was that, “the real learning of a man is of more public importance than any particular religious opinions he may entertain”--that Moslem liberality was in striking contrast with the then intolerant state of Europe? Have we forgotten that the Khalifate arose in the most degenerate period of Rome and Persia, also that the greater part of Europe lay under the dark cloud of barbarism? Does the magnificent valour of the Arabs, inspired as it was by a theism as lofty as it was pure, not appeal to us? Does not the moderation and comparative toleration shown by them to the conquered, notwithstanding the fierce and burning ardour to regenerate mankind that impelled them onwards to conquest, also appeal to us? Does it not all the more appeal to us, when we contrast this with the bitterness of the attitude of the Christian sects towards one another? Especially when we consider that in Christendom as it was then constituted, extortion, tyranny and imperial centralization, combining with ecclesiastical despotism and persecution, had practically extinguished patriotism, by substituting in its place a schismatic and