figs and grapes that she has achieved are not such as could have been gathered from the thorn and thistle of human effort. Yet curiously enough, as I have shown, the environment in which it was born was strangely stern and sterile! This, however, is one of those natural anomalies that we would do well to leave alone. One of those paradoxes, those mysteries which Nature teems with, that are altogether beyond human comprehension. Whether or not he had made a study of the Socratic precept “Γνῶθι σεαυτόν” “know thyself,” Mohammed knew himself as thoroughly as it is possible for a man to do. Early in life he took his own measure. Gauged his own strength and weakness. Estimated the breadth, the length, and the depth to which he could go. As a result of this moral estimate, he felt that his resources without God were as slender as a broken reed buffeted by storm winds. He knew that his real strength lay in the knowledge and power of God and of Nature. The temperament and character of the Psalmist--he who looked on God as the strong tower and rock of his defence, his refuge, not however in time of trouble alone, but at all times--was strongly developed in him. The genius of the whole Semitic race was centred in Mohammed. It was this, amounting as it does to the sublimest egotheism, that gave him confidence, then conviction. It was this righteous conviction that carried him as it were on the wings of the wind--immortal breath and soul, as he pictured it--of the living and eternal God. Through this feeling he converted the innate fear and veneration that inspired him into the hand and power of the Almighty. If genius implies a keen psychological insight into the nature and inner consciousness of life’s issues, added to inexhaustible energy, capacity for work and patience, then Mohammed was a genius. Certainly, if we accept Buffon’s definition of genius, as, “but a greater aptitude for perseverance,” he was without doubt a genius of the highest degree. The founder of a faith--one of the greatest the world has produced--spiritual commander of the faithful, his genius was essentially moral and religious. His whole life was one long labour of love and devotion to achieve his object, i.e. to proclaim God to the nations of the earth: the first half of it passed in secular work but in silent contemplation; the second half, itself divisible into two periods, twelve years of persuasion, followed to the close by active aggression and battle.