Muhammad permitted polygamy, and enjoined the practical seclusion of women. This, as Sir Syed Ahmad has pointed out, was the counsel of common sense in Arabia at the time of the Prophet. Apparently there were more women than men, and if a woman was not under the protection of some man, and was not under guard, she was very likely to come to harm. But I do not think that this counsel holds good for all time. Polygamy among Indian Muhammadans is dying out, but the general Muhammadan here still imprisons his womankind in the comfortable assurance that he is thereby paving his own way to salvation. I do not see much hope for the physical and mental development of Muhammadans so long as one half of the people remains in seclusion and ignorance, in a habit of life necessarily unhealthy. If you observe that you thereby escape the evils that are published to the world in European divorce courts, I would answer that in the first place I doubt the completeness of your escape, (it is a matter on which I have heard much sardonic comment from Muslim friends), and that in the second place, even granting what you say, 80% of women free, educated, virtuous and healthy, is a far better result than 100% merely virtuous, and that by constraint. Muhammad laid down that a man should pray five times a day. To my mind this was merely the Prophet's way of saying that man's whole life should be a prayer: the modern Muhammadan too often "repeats prayers" five times a day and is satisfied. He might as well repeat the multiplication table five times a day. "Words without thoughts to Heaven never go" said the king in _Hamlet_. I do not know if our friend D.B. prays ten times a day, or five times, or not at all, and (candidly) I do not care. All I know is that in his responsible position he would die rather than take a bribe, tell a lie, intrigue against his master. And I fancy that the Prophet, could he return to earth, would find this abundantly sufficient.