118 MEDIAEVAL CIVILIZATION III. The beginning of several of our sciences, algebra, trigonometry, chemistry, and the Arabic fig- ures, which the Arabs themselves had borrowed from the Hindoos and which have made easy the most complex calculations, to say nothing of magic, talis- mans, in which the Italians have believed even down to our day, and the philosopher's stone, which alchem- ists in the pay of certain German princes were stitt searching for as late as the seventeenth century. The Arabs had amassed and condensed all the inventions and all the knowledge of the old worlds of the Orient (Greece, Persia, India, and even China) ; this is what they have transmitted to us; a number of Arabic words which enter into our language1 are a testimony of this; through them the western world, having returned to barbarism, became once more civilized. If our ideas and our arts go back to antiquity, all the inven- tions which make life easy and agreeable come to us from the Arabs. Influence of the Orient on Belief.—This contact with the East acted upon the religious ideas of the Chris- lians. At first they were over-excited by the struggle. But on seeing the infidels close at hand they found among them men grave, enlightened, generous, like Saladin, who released the Christian prisoners without a ransom and sent his own physician to care for a crusader chief who was ill, and they began to respect them. Wishing to prove the merits of the Christian re- ligion to the Moslems and to the Jews, they discussed with them, and the discussion forced them to compare 1 Alcohol, elixir, algebra, alembic, alcove, sofa, amulet>gala, arsenal, admiral, acxiith, cipher, aero, etc*