spiritual ruler of the East and polygamy, as Christ stands for the West and monogamy! It was with these weapons, combined with the tenacity of an elastic and imperishable patience, that Mohammed fought the Koreish and other tribes, and it was with them he finally conquered. Had he been insincere, there would have been no Islam. Had there been no spirit of a divine moral conception such as he infused into the creed (which came through him from the great fountain head of God and Nature), Islam would have withered and perished from sheer exhaustion and debility. From the standpoint of physical and moral purity, Mohammed was in every sense an Essene. Not only therefore was cleanliness of the body an absolute essential, but cleanliness of mind. Filthy immoral actions and depravities that he knew existed, unjust violence and iniquities, whether openly done or in concealment, were condemned and forbidden in scathing terms as a violation of God’s express command. The sophistry that would make an evil to be no crime unless found out, he denounced with all the fiery ardour of his fervent nature. From God there was no concealment. In his eyes it was a crime all the same--greater, in fact, because of attempted concealment. CHAPTER V THE MATERIAL AND OTHER SIDES OF THE PROPHET’S CHARACTER In refuting those sceptics who have doubted the truth and sincerity of Islam, Carlyle condemns scepticism (rather too hastily it seems to me) as an indication of spiritual paralysis. Most unquestionably he was right in denouncing the former as an idiotic and godless theory. But scepticism itself in a general sense is not necessarily an evil. On the contrary, it is a natural tendency that arises out of the instinct of curiosity. Knowledge is not an inert and passive principle, but an active and dynamic force. Buckle in his history speaks of scepticism as stimulating curiosity. But he has put the cart before the horse. It is curiosity that excites scepticism. Curiosity is an animal instinct--the basis of all science. It exists in the lower animal creation--scepticism only in the upper human section. It is a higher or further development, a tendency that is certainly strengthened, if not acquired through education.