The ignorance of the natural talents, general characteristics, and daily habits of the Prophet of Arabia almost universally prevalent, even among persons of education and of more than ordinary intellectual attainments, is extraordinary; especially when the abundant facilities for information upon these points are considered. No name in history has been subjected to such fierce assaults by sectarian bigotry and theological rancor as his. The popular idea of Mohammed is that he was a vulgar impostor, licentious, cunning, brutal, and unscrupulous; periodically insane from repeated attacks of epilepsy; given to the practice of fraudulent miracles; a monster, who hesitated at no crime that would further his ends; who wrote a book called the Koran, which is full of sensual images, and describes heaven as a place especially set apart for the unrestricted indulgence of the animal passions. In former times public credulity went still farther, and Christian writers of the eleventh century, and even later, were in the habit of representing the greatest of iconoclasts--who excepted from the clemency of the victor only the adorers of fire and of idols--as a false god; a conception which, indicated by the familiar word “mummery,” has been incorporated into our language. Afterwards he was considered merely as a propagator of heresy, and, punished as such, he figures in the immortal work of Dante: “Poi che l’un pié per girsene sospese, Maometto;” and, finally, the absurdity of ignorance having reached its culmination, he was described as a camel-thief, and an apostate cardinal who preached a spurious doctrine through envy, because he had failed to reach the coveted dignity of Pope! Motives of ecclesiastical jealousy and religious intolerance led also to the suppression of information and the falsification of truth respecting the Koran. Hardly one person in ten thousand has read a translation of it; indeed, this feat has been repeatedly declared an impossibility, on account of the monotonous and prosaic character of its contents; nor has one foreigner in a million perused the original, which, it may be added, cannot be appropriately rendered into another tongue. No complete rendition of this famous book into a living language was made for eleven hundred years after the death of Mohammed, and to-day not more than a dozen versions, all told, exist. It has been, moreover, a rule, subject to but few exceptions and those of recent date, that translations, commentaries, and analyses of the Koran, edited by misbelievers, have been written with the express design of casting odium upon the Prophet and his followers. Under such unfavorable circumstances, an impartial examination of the doctrines of Islam was impossible to one not versed in Arabic, and the public mind, which received its impression of such subjects largely from the pulpit, obstinately refused to consider any view which was at variance with its preconceived opinions. To obtain