of their natural reason, they
came, in after days, when Greek philosophy had been naturalized in the
Caliphate, to adapt its methods and doctrines to the support of their
views. They employed a quasi-philosophical method, by which, according
to Maimonides, they first reflected how things ought to be in order to
support, or at least not contradict, their opinions, and then, when
their minds were made up with regard to this imaginary system, declared
that the world was no otherwise constituted. The dogmas of creation and
providence, of divine omnipotence, chiefly exercised them; and they
sought to assert for God an immediate action in the making and the
keeping of the world. Space they looked upon as pervaded by atoms
possessing no quality or extension, and time was similarly divided into
innumerable instants. Each change in the constitution of the atoms is a
direct act of the Almighty. When the fire burns, or the water moistens,
these terms merely express the habitual connexion which our senses
perceive between one thing and another. It is not the man that throws a
stone who is its real mover: the supreme agent has for the moment
created motion. If a living being die, it is because God has created the
attribute of death; and the body remains dead, only because that
attribute is unceasingly created. Thus, on the one hand, the object
called the cause is denied to have any efficient power to produce the
so-called effect; and, on the other hand, the regularities or laws of
nature are explained to be direct interferences by the Deity. The
supposed uniformity and necessity of causation is only an effect of
custom, and may be at any moment rescinded. In this way, by a theory
which, according to Averroes, involves the negation of science, the
Moslem theologians believed that they had exalted God beyond the limits
of the metaphysical and scientific conceptions of law, form and matter;
whilst they at the same time stood aloof from the vulgar doctrines,
attributing a causality to things. Thus they deemed they had left a
clear ground for the possibility of miracles.

But at least one point was common to the theological and the
philosophical doctrine. Carrying out, it may be, the principles of the
Neo-Platonists, they kept the sanctuary of the Deity securely guarded,
and interposed between him and his creatures a spiritual order of potent
principles, from the Intelligence, which is the first-born image of the
great unity, to the Sou