But they were centuries
of violence, rapine, and cruel injustice; and truth was so little
heeded that the noble and daring spirits who sought it, especially in
its scientific form, did so in deadly peril of the fagot and the
halter.
During this period there were several very important extra-European
movements, one or two of which deeply affected Europe. Islam arose,
and conquered far and wide, uniting fundamentally different races into
a brotherhood of feeling which Christianity has never been able to
rival, and at the time of the Crusades profoundly influencing European
culture. It produced a civilization of its own, brilliant and here and
there useful, but hopelessly limited when compared with the
civilization of which we ourselves are the heirs. The great cultured
peoples of southeastern and eastern Asia continued their checkered
development totally unaffected by, and without knowledge of, any
European influence.
Throughout the whole period there came against Europe, out of the
unknown wastes of central Asia, an endless succession of strange and
terrible conqueror races whose mission was mere destruction--Hun and
Avar, Mongol, Tartar, and Turk. These fierce and squalid tribes of
warrior horsemen flailed mankind with red scourges, wasted and
destroyed, and then vanished from the ground they had overrun.
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