Is it possible that Europe is unmindful of, and has the ingratitude to ignore, the splendid services of the scientists and philosophers of Arabia? Are the names of Assamh, Abu Othman, Alberuni, Albeithar, Abu Ali Ibn Sina (Avicenna), the great physician and philosopher, Ibn Rushd (Averroes) of Cordova, the chief commentator on Aristotle, Ibn Bajja (Avempace) besides a host of others, but dead letters? Is the great work that they have done, and the fame they have left behind them in their books, to be consigned to the limbo of oblivion, by an ungrateful because antipathetic Europe? Does the work of Alhazen, author of optical treatises, who understood the weight of air, corrected the Greek misconception or theory of vision, and determined the function of the retina, count for nothing? Do we owe no tribute to a great thinker such as Ghazali, who in speaking of his attempts to detach himself from his youthful opinions says: “I said to myself, my aim is simply to know the truth of things, consequently it is indispensable for me to ascertain what is knowledge”? It cannot be that already we have lost sight of the amazing intellectual activity of the Moslem world, during the earlier part of the “Abbasid” period more especially? It cannot be that we have quite forgotten the irrecoverable loss that was inflicted on Arabian literature and on the world at large by the wanton destruction of thousands of books that was prompted by Christian bigotry and fanaticism? It cannot surely be said of Christian Europe that for centuries now she has done her best to hide her obligation to the Arabs? Yet most assuredly obligations such as these are far too sacred to lie much longer hidden! Let Europe--Christendom rather--confess and acknowledge her fault. Let her proclaim aloud to her own ignorant masses, and to the world at large, the ingratitude she has displayed, and the eternal debt she owes to the Islam she no longer despises. Open confession is good for the soul, and only a confession such as this can wipe off the black stain which has for so long besmirched her fair fame. Let Christendom once and for all recognize that the greatest of all faults is to be conscious of none--that acknowledging a fault is saying, only in other words, we are wiser to-day than we were yesterday. Only through magnanimity such as this can she claim redemption. For she must surely know that “injustice founded on religious rancour and national conceit cannot be perpetrated for ever.” Let me endeavour to make my meaning somewhat clearer, by means of two simple illustrations--the one belonging to the eighteenth century, the other to the twentieth. “How many great men do you reckon?” Buffon was asked one day. “Five,” answered he at once; “Newton, Bacon, Leibnitz, Montesquieu, and myself.”