Ashari relies upon the revelation contained in the Koran. He does not recognize any rational knowledge with regard to Divine things that is independent of the Koran. The senses are not in general likely to deceive us, but on the other hand our judgment may easily do so. We know God, it is true, by our reason, but only from Revelation, which is the one source of such knowledge. According to Ashari, then, God is first of all the omnipotent Creator. Farther he is omniscient: he knows what men do and what they wish to do: he knows also what happens, and how that which does not happen would have happened, if it had happened. Moreover all predicates which express any perfection are applicable to God, with the proviso that they apply to him in another and higher sense than to his creatures. In creating and sustaining the world God is the sole cause: all worldly events proceed continually and directly from him. Man, however, is quite conscious of the difference between his involuntary movements, such as shivering and shaking, and those which are carried out in the exercise of his will and choice. 12. The most characteristic theory which the dialectic of the Muslims has fashioned, is their doctrine of Atoms. The development of this doctrine is still wrapped in great obscurity. It was advocated by the Mutazilites but particularly by their opponents before the time of Ashari. Our sketch shows how it was held in the Asharite school, where partly perhaps it was first developed. The Atomic doctrine of the Muslim dialecticians had its source, of course, in Greek Natural Philosophy; but its reception and farther development were determined by the requirements of theological Polemic and Apologetic. The like phenomenon may be observed in the case of individual Jews and among believing Catholics. It is impossible to suppose that Atomism was taken up in Islam, merely because Aristotle had fought against it. Here we have to register a desperate struggle for a religious advantage, and one in which weapons are not chosen at will: It is the end that decides. Nature has to be explained, not from herself but from some divine creative act; and this world must be regarded not as an eternal and divine order of things, but as a creature of transient existence. God must be thought of and spoken of as a freely-working and almighty Creator, not as an impersonal cause or inactive primeval source. Accordingly, from the earliest times the doctrine of the creation is placed at the apex of Muslim dogmatics, as a testimony against the pagan-philosophical view of the eternity of the world and the efficient operations of Nature. What we perceive of the sensible world,—say these Atomists,—is made up of passing ‘accidents’ which every moment come and go. The substratum of this ‘change’ is constituted by the (bodily) substances; and because of changes occurring in or on these substances, they cannot be thought of as themselves unchangeable. If then they are changeable, they cannot be