om the local
wonderworker, whose shrine enclosed his image, to the impersonal and
distant but awful power who held the earth beneath his sway, was
Mahomet's contribution to the mental development of his country, and the
achievement within those confines was wonderful. But to the sum of the
world's thought he gave little. His central tenet had already gained its
votaries in other lands, and, moreover, their form of belief in one God
was such that further development of thought was still possible to them.
The philosophy of Islam blocks the way of evolution for itself, because
its system leaves no room for such pregnant ideas as divine incarnation,
divine immanence, the fatherhood of God. It has been content to formulate
one article of faith: "There is no God but God," the corollary as to
Mahomet's divine appointment to the office of Prophet being merely an
affirmation of loyalty to the particular mode of faith he imposed.
Therefore the part taken by Islam in the reading of the world's
mystery ceased with the acceptance of that previously conceived central
tenet.

In the sphere of ideas, indeed, Mahomet gave his people nothing original,
for his power did not lie in intellect, but in action. His mind had not
passed the stage that has just exchanged many fetishes for one spiritual
God, still to be propitiated, not alone by sacrifices, but by prayers,
ceremonies, and praise. In the world of action lay the strength of Islam
and the genius of its founder; it is therefore in the impress it made
upon events and not in its theology and philosophy that its secret is to
be found. But besides the acceptance of one God as Lord, Islam forced
upon its devotees a still more potent idea, whose influence is felt both
in the spheres of thought and action.

As an outcome of its political and military needs Mahomet created and
established its unassailable belief in fatality--not the fatalism
of cause and effect, bearing within itself the essence of a reason too
vast for humanity to comprehend, but the fatalism of an omnipotent and
capricious power inherent in the Mahomedan conception of God. With this
mighty and irresponsible being nothing can prevail. Before every event
the result of it is irrevocably decreed. Mankind can alter no tiniest
detail of his destined lot. The idea corresponds with Mahomet's vision of
God--an awful, incomprehensible deity, who dwells perpetually in the
terrors of earth, not in its gentleness and compassion. The do