This gives to it unity and definiteness, and renders superfluous the attemps that have been made from time to time to define the limits which divide geography from geology on the one hand and from history on the other.
But the definiteness of this line should not cause us to overlook the fact that there was during these centuries much confusion of custom and practice.
Many of its most distinguished exponents are Flemings by birth, and their writings reflect the characteristic Flemish scenery; they have the sensuousness, the colour and the realism of Flemish art; and on the other hand the tendency to mysticism, to abstraction, is far removed from the lucidity and definiteness associated with French literature properly so-called.
The philosophers in their way, like the mystics of Persia (the Sufites) in another, tended towards a theory of the communion of man with the spiritual world, which may be considered a protest against the practical and almost prosaic definiteness of the creed of Mahomet.
But the bulk of his work consisted in imparting scientific definiteness to what was already vaguely known, and in demolishing the errors of his predecessors.
