the true principles of Islam to make such
progress an unnatural solution of her destiny.

Mohammedanism in its institution, and for many centuries after its
birth, was eminently a rationalistic creed; and it was through reason
as well as faith that it first achieved its spiritual triumphs. If we
examine its bases its early history, we must indeed admit this. The
Koran, which we are accustomed to speak of as the written code of
Mohammedan law, is in reality no legal text-book by which Mussulmans
live. At best it enunciates clearly certain religious truths, the unity
of God, the doctrine of rewards and punishments in a future life, and
the revelation of God's claims on man. Psalms, many of them sublime,
occupy the greater number of its chapters; promises of bliss to
believers and destruction to unbelievers come next; then the traditional
history of revelation as it was current among the Semitic race; and only
in the later chapters, and then obscurely, anything which can properly
be classed as law. Yet law is the essence of Islam, and was so from its
earliest foundation as a social and religious polity; and it is evident
that to it, and not to the Koran's dogmatic theology, Islam owed its
great and long career of triumph in the world.

Now this law was not, like the Koran, brought down full-fledged from
heaven. At first it was little more than a confirmation of the common
custom of Arabia, supplemented indeed and corrected by revelation, but
based upon existing rules of right and wrong. When, however, Islam
emerged from Arabia in the first decade of her existence, and embracing
a foreign civilization found herself face to face with new conditions of
life, mere custom ceased to be a sufficient guide; and, the voice of
direct revelation having ceased, the faithful were thrown upon their
reason to direct them how they were to act. Revelation continued,
nevertheless, to be the groundwork of their reasoning, and the teaching
of their great leader the justification of each new development of law
as the cases requiring it arose. The Koran was cited wherever it was
possible to find a citation, and where these failed tradition was called
in. The companions of the Prophet were in the first instance consulted,
and their recollections of his sayings and doings quoted freely; while
afterwards, when these too were gone, the companions of the companions
took their place, and became in their turn cited.

Thus by a subtle process of comp