A true son of the desert, it is impossible to understand the powerful and complex personality of Mohammed, unless we can appreciate the peculiar character and genius of the desert. More so in some ways even than the seaman, the dweller or sojourner in the desert is distinct and unique in himself. Possessing the courage of the Fatalist, and as free as the roving winds of heaven, he is all the same of a shrinking and timorous nature, confronted as he often is by certain aspects and phenomena that imperil his life and strike down to the very roots of his moral consciousness. In the desert there is, comparatively speaking, little life. Unlike the forest region, it is naked and almost destitute. There, as at sea, man is face to face not only with the great elements, but with the greater Infinite and Invisible. He is nearer to God and the immensity of Nature. There is nothing--or little at least--to distract his attention--nothing between him and the ever watchful Inscrutable. There is no shade from the sun by day, no protection from the moon and stars at night. They look down on him as from the pinnacle of the sublimest elevation. The fiercer glory of the sun by day burns into his very soul, consumes his very marrow. The milder effulgence of the moon by night throws its silvery glamour over all his senses. The lesser and more distant splendour of the stars--those watch-fires of angelic spirits--in their countless myriads awe and bewilder him. In the choking breath of the simoom he feels the potentialities of God, and his own helpless impotence. Struck all of a heap by its stifling blast, he is filled with fear and trembling in the presence of a Power invisible yet tangible and deadly. Whether he wills or not, the fear of God--of the Inexorable and Inevitable--enters into his heart and takes possession of his inmost soul. Call it the fear of God or not, it is practically one and the same feature--the mere human label makes no difference to this awful and unseen reality--the same fear of the Unknown, the Unexpected and the Inevitable: the Inevitable that is always with us, the agnostic and the sophist no less than with the theologian, yet unseen, incomprehensible and omnipotent. But more than anything, it is the awful and impenetrable silence that impresses and appals the silent and dignified nomad of the desert.