It is this sensual and degraded view of woman that destroys to so great an extent the good influence which the better part of the teaching of Islám might exert in the East. So long as women are held in so light an esteem, they will remain ignorant, and bigoted, and sensual; and so long as mothers are what most Muslim mothers are now, their children will be ignorant and fanatical and vicious. In Turkey there are other influences at work besides the Mohammadan social system; but Turkish women may serve as an instance of the state of things which that system encourages. ‘In those early years spent at home, when the child ought to have instilled into him some germ of those principles of conduct by which men must walk in the world if they are to hold up their heads among civilised nations, the Turkish child is only taught the first steps towards those vicious habits of mind and body which have made his race what it is. The root of the evil is partly found in the harem system. So long as that system keeps Turkish women in their present depressed state, so long will Turkish boys and girls be vicious and ignorant.’ As I have said elsewhere,[20] ‘It is quite certain that there is no hope for the Turks so long as Turkish women remain what they are, and home-training is the initiation of vice.’ If the mother is ignorant and vicious, the son cannot form a high ideal of womanhood, and thus is barred off from the chivalrous spirit wherewith alone a man may reach to the highest love:—that ‘Subtle master under heaven, Not only to keep down the base in man, But teach high thought, and amiable words, And courtliness, and the desire of fame, And love of truth, and all that makes a man.’ The Muslin has no ideal of chivalry like this to make his life pure and honourable: his religion encourages an opposite view, and the women among whom he is brought up only confirm it.