CHAPTER V. ENGLAND'S INTEREST IN ISLAM. Nothing now remains for me but to point the moral which these essays were designed to draw. It will have been observed that hitherto I have avoided as much as possible all allusion to the direct political action which Christendom is exercising, and must ever more and more exercise, upon the fortunes of Islam; and in this I have been guided by two motives. I have wished, first, to give prominence to the fact that in all great movements of the human intellect the force of progression or decay should be looked for mainly from within, not from without; and, secondly, to simplify my subject so as to render it more easily intelligible to the reading public. We have reached, however, the point now when it will be necessary to take different ground, and look at Islam no longer as regards her internal economy, but as she is being affected by the world at large. We must inquire what influence the material pressure of Europe is likely to have on her in the Levant, and what in Africa and Central Asia; and, above all, we must examine closely our own position towards her, and the course which duty and interest require us to pursue in regard to the vast Mussulman population of our Indian Empire. I take it the sentiment generally of Continental Europe--I do not speak of England--towards Mohammedanism is still much what it has always been, namely, one of social hostility and political aggression. In spite of all the changes which have affected religious thought in Catholic Europe, and of the modern doctrine of tolerance in matters of opinion, none of the nations by which Islam is immediately confronted to the north and west have really changed anything of their policy towards her, since the days when they first resolved on the recovery of "Christian lands lost to the infidel." It is true that most of them no longer put forward religious zeal as the motive of their action, or the possession of the Holy Sepulchre as its immediate object; but under the name of "civilization" their crusade is no less a continuous reality, and the direction of their efforts has not ceased to be the resumption by Europe of political control in the whole of the provinces once forming the Roman Empire. The sentiment in its origin was a just one, and, though now become for the most part selfish with the various Christian states, who see in the advantage to Christendom only an advantage to themselves, it appeals to an ancient and respectable moral sanction which is in itself no inconsiderable power. It is certain that the national conscience neither of France, nor Spain, nor Italy, nor Austria would repudiate an aggression, however unprovoked, upon any of the still independent Mussulman states of the Mediterranean, and that the only judgment passed on such an act by public opinion would be one dependent on its failure or success.