[4] I have employed the phrase "Islam of Omar" throughout the present work as a means of designating the period of nine-and-twenty years between the death of Mohammed, 12th Rabi I. 11 A.H., June 8th, A.D. 632, and the assassination of Ali, 17th Hamzan, 40 A.H., January 27th, A.D. 661. Even in the lifetime of Mohammed the genius and personality of Omar made themselves distinctly felt. During the caliphate of Abu Bekr the power of Omar was analogous to that of Hildebrand during the two pontificates which immediately precede his own. Omar's is the determining force, the will, and throughout his own, and the caliphates of Osman and Ali which follow, that force and that will impart its distinction and its direction to the course of the political life of Islam. The nature and extent of the sway of this extraordinary mind mark an epoch in world-history not less memorable than the Rome of Sulla or the Athens of Pericles. From the Arab historians a portrait that is fairly convincing can be arranged, and the threat or promise with which he is said to have announced the purpose for which he undertook the caliphate is consonant with the impression of his appearance and manners which tradition has preserved--"He that is weakest among you shall be, in my sight, as the strongest until I have made good his rights unto him; but he that is strongest shall I deal with like the weakest until he submit himself to the Law." [5] Thwarted in his schemes of world-conquest in the East by Nelson and Sir Sidney Smith, Bonaparte returned to pursue in Europe the same visionary but mighty designs. In Napoleon's career the voyage on the frigate _Muiron_ marks the moment analogous to Caesar's return from Gaul, January, 49 B.C. But Caius Julius crossed the Rubicon at the head of fifty thousand men. Bonaparte returned from Egypt alone. The best soldiers of his staff indeed accompanied him, Lannes, the "Roland" of the battles of the Empire, Murat, Bessières, Marmont, Lavalette, but to a resolute government this would but have blackened his desertion of Kleber and the army of the Pyramids. The adventure appears more desperate than Caesar's; but speculation, anxiety, even hope, awaited Napoleon at Paris. Moreau was no Pompey. The sequence of dates is interesting. On the night of August 22nd, 1799, Bonaparte went on board the frigate; five weeks later, having just missed Nelson, he reached Ajaccio; on October 9th he lands at Fréjus, on the 16th he is at Paris, and resumes his residence in rue de la Victoire. Three weeks later, on November 9th, occurs the incident known to history as 18th Brumaire. [6] The Empire of Rome, of Alexander, of Britain, is not even the antagonist of what is essential in Cosmopolitanism. Rome, Hellas, Britain possess by God or Fate the power to govern to a _more excellent_ degree than other States--Imperialism is the realization of this power. Cosmopolitanism's _laissez-faire_ is anarchism or it is the betrayal of humanity. LECTURE V