isolation and becomes heir to the Oriental-Hellenistic civilisation. It appears as the last link in a long development of universal history. From the days of Alexander the Great until the time of the Roman emperors the East had been compelled to endure Western conditions and European rule. But as in the days of the earlier emperors the Hellenic spirit was stifled by the embrace of the East, and as the classical world greedily absorbed the cults and religions of the East, an ethnical reaction of the East sets in from the third century onwards and the Semitic element begins to stir beneath the Hellenistic surface. Within the Christian sphere this current shews itself more especially in the territories of the Greek and Aramaic languages, and the difference between the Greek and the Latin Churches is mainly that between Asia and Europe. With the expansion of the Arabs then the East reacquires in the political sphere the independence which had been slowly preparing in the domain of civilisation. Nothing absolutely new therefore arrives from the expansion of the Arabs, not even conditions uncongenial to the West of the Middle Ages; in fact on closer examination we perceive an intimate inner relationship in the world of thought between the Christianity of the Middle Ages and Islām. This fact is moreover not remarkable, for both spheres of culture repose on the same foundation, the Hellenistic-Oriental civilisation of early Christian times. In the territory of the Mediterranean circle conquered by the Arabs this civilisation lived on, but as the empire of the Caliphs thrust its main centre further and further eastward, and annexed more and more the traditions of ancient Persia, the culture of Islām, at first strongly tinged with Hellenism, was bound to assume an ever stronger Oriental character. On the other hand on Western ground the Germanic genius freed itself from this civilisation, which as a foreign import could not thrive there, to develop out of its remnants the typically Western forms of the Middle Ages.
Just as the ecclesiastical conception on the one hand broke the historical continuity, it perceived on the other hand in the expansion of the Arabs nothing but a further extension of the religion of Islām and therefore totally misunderstood the real nature of the movement. It was not the religion of Islām which was by that time disseminated by the sword, but merely the political sovereignty of the Arabs. The acceptance of Islām by others than Arabians was not only not striven for, but was in fact regarded with disfavour. The subdued peoples might peacefully retain their old religions, provided only they paid ample tribute. As on conversion to Islām these payments ceased, at least in the early times such changes of religion were disliked. The circumstance that a few pious men subsequently practised such proselytism, or that the material advantages of apostasy gradually led the population of the conquered countries to Islām, must not blind our eyes to the fact that the movement originated from quite other motives.
