other extremity of Europe, and even outside of Europe, in the seventh century the caliph, in the fifteenth century a sultan, a Mahomet or an Omar, a fanatical Arab or brutal Turk, who had just overcome Christians with the sword, himself assigned the limits of his own absolutism: if the vanquished were reduced to the condition of heavily ransomed tributaries and of inferiors daily humiliated, he allowed them their worship, civil laws and domestic usages; he left them their institutions, their convents and their schools; he allowed them to administer the affairs of their own community as they pleased under the jurisdiction of their patriarch, or other natural chieftains.--Thus whatever the tyrant may have been, he did not attempt to entirely recast Man, nor to subject all his subjects to the recasting. However penetrating the tyranny, it stopped in the soul at a certain point; that point reached, the sentiments were left free. No matter how comprehensive this tyranny may have been, it affected only one class of men; the others, outside the net, remained free. When it wounded all at once all sensitive chords, it did so only to a limited minority, unable to defend themselves. As far as the majority, able to protect itself, their main sensibilities were respected, especially the most sensitive, this one or that one, as the case might be, now the conscience which binds man to his religion, now that amour-propre on which honor depends, and now the habits which make man cling to customs, hereditary usages and outward observances. As far as the others were concerned, those which relate to property, personal welfare, and social position, it proceeded cautiously and with moderation. In this way the discretion of the ruler lessened the resistance of the subject, and a daring enterprise, even mischievous, was not outrageous; it might be carried out; nothing was required but a force in hand equal to the resistance it provoked.