things which most resemble ourselves, and each man dreams of the unknown, and the impossible according to his nature.” Mohammed’s chimera, as we know, was God and Arabian unity. But there was nothing chimerical about the former, and with this invincible lever, the latter too was a distinct probability. For although he was doubtless superstitious--that is natural--and wrestled with shadows and visions, Mohammed dealt in realities. To him God was the most real thing, the sternest reality of all in the universe. God, in fact, was the Universe. These, which to another would have been the unknown and the impossible, were to him the possible and the inevitable. The nature that was in him was the nature of God and the universe. There is a point where profundity is oblivion, when light becomes extinguished. Though from a literary aspect Mohammed was not profound, in a religious sense his profundity, centring as it did in God, burst forth into the Cimmerian darkness which enveloped his country with the brilliancy of a meteor that illumines the blackest night. There is too a way of encountering error by going all the way to meet the truth, also by a sort of violent good faith which accepts everything unconditionally. There was nothing violent (certainly not for a long period), but there was everything that stands for goodness and stability in Mohammed’s faith. It was thus--in the spirit of a hero and the valour of a Paladin--he encountered the error and opposition of his enemies by first of all going out of his way to meet the truth; then, in spite of themselves and their hostility, by enforcing it upon those who would not be persuaded. According to Fontenelle, “there is only truth that persuades, and even without requiring to appear with all its proofs. It makes its way so naturally into the mind, that when it is heard for the first time, it seems as if one were only remembering.” This was very much the case with Mohammed. This was why he tried at first to lead and not to drive his countrymen to the truth. To him who saw the truth of God’s existence, His mercy written as plainly in the falling raindrop as His power of retribution is in the lightning that flashes across the sky as if it would rend it, their stubbornness in rejecting God was utterly incomprehensible. His mind had two attitudes. The one was turned to God, the other to man. In contemplating God, he but studied man’s interests and his own. But contemplation with Mohammed did not end by becoming a form of indolence. Imaginative--visionary, in fact--as he was, he did not allow his imagination to play tricks with him. He did not fancy that he wanted for nothing. Even when married to Khadija, and in tolerable affluence, there was obviously a great void in his life. This want of course was spiritual. Exact and punctilious as he was in his temporal duties, his whole bent and inclination was towards the former. As a younger and poorer man, he had looked so much at the humanity around him