"After the calamities which the state of literature sustained in consequence of the incursions of the northern nations, the first restorers of the antient philosophical sciences in Europe... were the Arabians. In the beginning of the eighth century, this wonderful people, equally famous for their conquests and their love of letters, in ravaging the Asiatic provinces found many Greek books, which they read with infinite avidity: and such was the gratification... that they requested their caliphs to procure from the emperor at Constantinople the best Greek writers. These they carefully translated into Arabic. ...The Greek poetry they rejected, because it inculcated polytheism and idolatry, which were inconsistent with their religion. ...Of the Greek history they made no use, because it recorded events which preceded their prophet Mahomet. Accustomed to a despotic empire, they neglected the political systems of the Greeks, which taught republican freedom. For the same reasons they despised the eloquence of the Athenian orators. The Greek ethics were superseded by their Alcoran, and on this account they did not study the works of Plato. Therefore no other Greek books engaged their attention but those which treated of mathematical, metaphysical, and physical knowledge. Mathematics coincided with their natural turn to astronomy and arithmetic. Metaphysics, or logic, suited their speculative genius, their love of tracing intricate and abstracted truths... Physics, in which I include medicine, assisted the chemical experiments to which they were so much addicted: and medicine, while it was connected with chemistry and botany, was a practical art of immediate utility. Hence they studied Aristotle Galen and Hippocrates with unremitted ardour and assiduity: they translated their writings into the Arabic tongue, and by degrees illustrated them with voluminous commentaries. These Arabic translations of the Greek philosophers produced new treatises of their own, particularly in medicine and metaphysics."