e it is nothing but
the primitive and natural religion of mankind, consists in abandoning
oneself to the will of God or, in other words, in accepting the
inevitable. This will of God is learned for the most part by observing
the course of nature and history, and remembering the fate meted out
habitually to various sorts of men. Were this all, Islam would be a pure
Stoicism, and Hebraic religion, in its ultimate phase, would be simply
the eloquence of physics. It would not, in that case, be a moral
inspiration at all, except as contemplation and the sense of one's
nothingness might occasionally silence the passions and for a moment
bewilder the mind. On recovering from this impression, however, men
would find themselves enriched with no self-knowledge, armed with no
precepts, and stimulated by no ideal. They would be reduced to enacting
their incidental impulses, as the animals are, quite as if they had
never perceived that in doing so they were fulfilling a divine decree.
Enlightened Moslems, accordingly, have often been more Epicurean than
Stoical; and if they have felt themselves (not without some reason)
superior to Christians in delicacy, in _savoir vivre_, in kinship with
all natural powers, this sense of superiority has been quite
rationalistic and purely human. Their religion contributed to it only
because it was simpler, freer from superstition, nearer to a clean and
pleasant regimen in life. Resignation to the will of God being granted,
expression of the will of man might more freely begin.

[Sidenote: enveloped in arbitrary doctrines.]

What made Islam, however, a positive and contagious novelty was the
assumption that God's will might be incidentally revealed to prophets
before the event, so that past experience was not the only source from
which its total operation might be gathered. In its opposition to
grosser idolatries Islam might appeal to experience and challenge those
who trusted in special deities to justify their worship in face of the
facts. The most decisive facts against idolaters, however, were not yet
patent, but were destined to burst upon mankind at the last day--and
most unpleasantly for the majority. Where Mohammed speaks in the name of
the universal natural power he is abundantly scornful toward that fond
paganism which consists in imagining distinct patrons for various
regions of nature or for sundry human activities. In turning to such
patrons the pagan regards something purely ideal or