first Khalifs, says that they endeavoured by this self-restraint to wean themselves from the lusts of the flesh. This is reading a later idea into a much earlier practice, which was originally designed simply as a more accurate following of the Prophet, who was unable to enjoy any luxury or splendour; but it shows that later generations were inclined to ascribe a more definitely ascetic motive to the affectedly simple life of the earlier Muslims, and no doubt that early puritanism, misunderstood by later ages, contributed to spread asceticism. Al-Qushayri (cited Browne: _Lit. Hist. of Persia_, i. pp. 297-8), after referring to the “Companions” and “Followers” of the first age of Islam, then mentions the “ascetes” or “devotees” as the elect of a later age, those who were most deeply concerned with matters of religion, and finally the Sufis as those elect of still later times, “whose souls were set on God, and who guarded their hearts from the disasters of heedlessness.” Historically this is an error, for the saints of early Islam were inspired by a spirit of strict adherence to the traditional life of their desert ancestors and rejected luxury as an “innovation,” very much the same spirit as that observed in the ancient Hebrew prophets; whilst the Sufis were no enthusiasts for tradition, but eschewed bodily indulgence as an entanglement of the flesh which hindered the progress of the spirit, so that they were in no sense the successors of the “Companions,” but were influenced by new ideas unknown to early Islam. Yet superficially the results were very much alike, and this caused the two to be connected, and helped the later custom of connecting the early puritans with the ascetics of a subsequent age. In its earliest form, also, Islam made a strong appeal to the motive of fear, an appeal not based on divine severity so much as on divine justice and on man’s consciousness of his own sinfulness and unworthiness, and on the fleeting passage of the life lived in this present world. There was an intense concentration on the Day of Judgment and on the perils of the sinner, a teaching which is perceived in the Qur´an even by the most casual reader: but all this was not altogether congenial to the Arab, although he in poetry certainly inclined towards a tone of sadness. The inevitable result of this teaching was asceticism in the puritanical sense, or, perhaps we should say, a tone of severity in religion.