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Oscar Wilde, His Life and Confessions/Chapter 18

On my return to London I saw Sir Ruggles Brise. No one could have shown me warmer sympathy, or more discriminating comprehension. I made my report to him and left the matter in his hands with perfect confidence. I took care to describe Oscar's condition to his friends while assuring them that his circumstances would soon be bettered. A little later I heard that the governor of the prison had been changed, that Oscar had got books and writing materials, and was allowed to have the gas burning in his cell to a late hour when it was turned down but not out. In fact, from that time on he was treated with all the kindness possible, and soon we heard that he was bearing the confinement and discipline better than could have been expected. Sir Evelyn Ruggles Brise had evidently settled the difficulty in the most humane spirit.

Later still I was told that Oscar had begun to write "De Profundis" in prison, and I was very hopeful about that too: no news could have given me greater pleasure. It seemed to me certain that he would justify himself to men by [Pg 346]turning the punishment into a stepping-stone. And in this belief when the time came I ventured to call on Sir Ruggles Brise with another petition.

"Surely," I said, "Oscar will not be imprisoned for the full term; surely four or five months for good conduct will be remitted?"

Sir Ruggles Brise listened sympathetically, but warned me at once that any remission was exceptional; however, he would let me know what could be done, if I would call again in a week. Much to my surprise, he did not seem certain even about the good conduct.

I returned at the end of the week, and had another long talk with him. He told me that good conduct meant, in prison parlance, absence of punishment, and Oscar had been punished pretty often. Of course his offenses were minor offenses; nothing serious; childish faults indeed for the most part: he was often talking, and he was often late in the morning; his cell was not kept so well as it might be, and so forth; peccadilloes, all; yet a certificate of "good conduct" depended on such trifling observances. In face of Oscar's record Sir Ruggles Brise did not think that the sentence would be easily lessened. I was thunder-struck. But then no rules to me are sacrosanct; indeed, they are only tolerable because of the exceptions. I had such a high opinion of Ruggles Brise—his kindness and sense of fair play—that I ventured to show him my whole mind on the matter.

"Oscar Wilde," I said to him, "is just about to face life again: he is more than half reconciled to his wife; he has begun a book, is shouldering the burden. A little encouragement now and I believe he will do better things than he has ever done. I am convinced that he has far bigger things in him than we have seen yet. But he is extraordinarily sensitive and extraordinarily vain. The danger is that he may be frightened and blighted by the harshness and hatred of the world. He may shrink into himself and do nothing if the wind be not tempered a little for him. A hint of encouragement now, the feeling that men like yourself think him worthful and deserving of special kindly treatment, and I feel certain he will do great things. I really believe it is in your hands to save a man of extraordinary talent, and get the best out of him, if you care to do it."

"Of course I care to do it," he cried. "You cannot doubt that, and I see exactly what you mean; but it will not be easy."

"Won't you see what can be done?" I persisted. "Put your mind to discover how it should be done, how the Home Secretary may be induced to remit the last few months of Wilde's sentence."

After a little while he replied:

"You must believe that the authorities are quite willing to help in any good work, more than willing, and I am sure I speak for the Home Secretary as well as for myself; but it is for you to give us some reason for acting—a reason that could be avowed and defended."

I did not at first catch his drift; so I persevered:

"You admit that the reason exists, that it would be a good thing to favour Wilde, then why not do it?"

"We live," he said, "under parliamentary rule. Suppose the question were asked in the House, and I think it very likely in the present state of public opinion that the question would be asked: what should we answer? It would not be an avowable reason that we hoped Wilde would write new plays and books, would it? That reason ought to be sufficient, I grant you; but, you see yourself, it would not be so regarded."

"You are right, I suppose," I had to admit. "But if I got you a petition from men of letters, asking you to release Wilde for his health's sake: would that do?"

Sir Ruggles Brise jumped at the suggestion.

"Certainly," he exclaimed, "if some men of letters, men of position, wrote asking that Wilde's sentence should be diminished by three or four months on account of his health, I think it would have the best effect."

"I will see Meredith at once," I said, "and some others. How many names should I get?"

"If you have Meredith," he replied, "you don't need many others. A dozen would do, or fewer if you find a dozen too many."

"I don't think I shall meet with any difficulty," I replied, "but I will let you know."

"You will find it harder than you think," he concluded, "but if you get one or two great names the rest may follow. In any case one or two good names will make it easier for you."

Naturally I thanked him for his kindness and went away absolutely content. I had never set myself a task which seemed simpler. Meredith could not be more merciless than a Royal Commission. I returned to my office in The Saturday Review and got the Royal Commission report on this sentence of two years' imprisonment with hard labour. The Commission recommended that it should be wiped off the Statute Book as too severe. I drafted a little petition as colourless as possible:

"In view of the fact that the punishment of two years' imprisonment with hard labour has been condemned by a Royal Commission as too severe, and inasmuch as Mr. Wilde has been distinguished by his work in letters and is now, we hear, suffering in health, we, your petitioners, pray—and so forth and so on."

I got this printed, and then sat down to write to Meredith asking when I could see him on the matter. I wanted his signature first to be printed underneath the petition, and then issue it. To my astonishment Meredith did not answer at once, and when I pressed him and set forth the facts he wrote to me that he could not do what I wished. I wrote again, begging him to let me see him on the matter. For the first time in my life he refused to see me: he wrote to me to say that nothing I could urge would move him, and it would therefore only be painful to both of us to find ourselves in conflict.

Nothing ever surprised me more than this attitude of Meredith's. I knew his poetry pretty well, and knew how severe he was on every sensual weakness perhaps because it was his own pitfall. I knew too what a fighter he was at heart and how he loved the virile virtues; but I thought I knew the man, knew his tender kindliness of heart, the founts of pity in him, and I felt certain I could count on him for any office of human charity or generosity. But no, he was impenetrable, hard. He told me long afterwards that he had rather a low opinion of Wilde's capacities, instinctive, deep-rooted contempt, too, for the showman in him, and an absolute abhorrence of his vice.

"That vile, sensual self-indulgence puts back the hands of the clock," he said, "and should not be forgiven."

For the life of me I could never forgive Meredith; never afterwards was he of any importance to me. He had always been to me a standard bearer in the eternal conflict, a leader in the Liberation War of Humanity, and here I found him pitiless to another who had been wounded on the same side in the great struggle: it seemed to me appalling. True, Wilde had not been wounded in fighting for us; true, he had fallen out and come to grief, as a drunkard might. But after all he had been fighting on the right side: had been a quickening intellectual influence: it was dreadful to pass him on the wayside and allow him callously to bleed to death. It was revoltingly cruel! The foremost Englishman of his time unable even to understand Christ's example, much less reach his height!

This refusal of Meredith's not only hurt me, but almost destroyed my hope, though it did not alter my purpose. I wanted a figurehead for my petition, and the figurehead I had chosen I could not get. I began to wonder and doubt. I next approached a very different man, the late Professor Churton Collins, a great friend of mine, who, in spite of an almost pedantic rigour of mind and character, had in him at bottom a curious spring of sympathy—a little pool of pure love for the poets and writers whom he admired. I got him to dinner and asked him to sign the petition; he refused, but on grounds other than those taken by Meredith.

"Of course Wilde ought to get out," he said, "the sentence was a savage one and showed bitter prejudice; but I have children, and my own way to make in the world, and if I did this I should be tarred with the Wilde brush. I cannot afford to do it. If he were really a great man I hope I should do it, but I don't agree with your estimate of him. I cannot think I am called upon to bell the British cat in his defence: it has many claws and all sharp."

As soon as he saw the position was unworthy of him, he shifted to new ground.

"If you were justified in coming to me, I should do it; but I am no one; why don't you go to Meredith, Swinburne or Hardy?"

I had to give up the Professor, as well as the poet. I knocked in turn at a great many doors, but all in vain. No one wished to take the odium on himself. One man, since become celebrated, said he had no position, his name was not good enough for the purpose. Others left my letters unanswered. Yet another sent a bare acknowledgment saying how sorry he was, but that public opinion was against Mr. Wilde; with one accord they all made excuses....

One day Professor Tyrrell of Trinity College, Dublin, happened to be in my office, while I was setting forth the difference between men of letters in France and England as exemplified by this conduct. In France among authors there is a recognised "esprit de corps," which constrains them to hold together. For instance when Zola was threatened with prosecution for "Nana," a dozen men like Cherbuliez, Feuillet, Dumas fils, who hated his work and regarded it as sensational, tawdry, immoral even, took up the cudgels for him at once; declared that the police were not judges of art, and should not interfere with a serious workman. All these Frenchmen, though they disliked Zola's work, and believed that his popularity was won by a low appeal, still admitted that he was a force in letters, and stood by him resolutely in spite of their own prepossessions and prejudices. But in England the feeling is altogether more selfish. Everyone consults his own sordid self-interest and is rather glad to see a social favourite come to grief: not a hand is stretched out to help him. Suddenly, Tyrrell broke in upon my exposition:

"I don't know whether my name is of any good to you," he said, "but I agree with all you have said, and my name might be classed with that of Churton Collins, though, of course, I've no right to speak for literature," and without more ado he signed the petition, adding, "Regius Professor of Greek at Trinity College, Dublin."

"When you next see Oscar," he continued, "please tell him that my wife and I asked after him. We both hold him in grateful memory as a most brilliant talker and writer, and a charming fellow to boot. Confusion take all their English Puritanism."

Merely living in Ireland tends to make an Englishman more humane; but one name was not enough, and Tyrrell's was the only one I could get. In despair, and knowing that George Wyndham had had a great liking for Oscar, and admiration for his high talent, I asked him to lunch at the Savoy; laid the matter before him, and begged him to give me his name. He refused, and in face of my astonishment he excused himself by saying that, as soon as the rumour had reached him of Oscar's intimacy with Bosie Douglas, he had asked Oscar whether there was any truth in the scandalous report.

"You see," he went on, "Bosie is by way of being a relation of mine, and so I had the right to ask. Oscar gave me his word of honour that there was nothing but friendship between them. He lied to me, and that I can never forgive."

A politician unable to forgive a lie—surely one can hear the mocking laughter of the gods! I could say nothing to such paltry affected nonsense. Politician-like Wyndham showed me how the wind of popular feeling blew, and I recognised that my efforts were in vain.

There is no fellow-feeling among English men of letters; in fact they hold together less than any other class and, by himself, none of them wished to help a wounded member of the flock. I had to tell Sir Ruggles Brise that I had failed.

I have been informed since that if I had begun by asking Thomas Hardy, I might have succeeded. I knew Hardy; but never cared greatly for his talent. I daresay if I had had nothing else to do I might have succeeded in some half degree. But all these two years I was extremely busy and anxious; the storm clouds in South Africa were growing steadily darker and my attitude to South African affairs was exceedingly unpopular in London. It seemed to me vitally important to prevent England from making war on the Boers. I had to abandon the attempt to get Oscar's sentence shortened, and comfort myself with Sir Ruggles Brise's assurance that he would be treated with the greatest possible consideration.

Still, my advocacy had had a good effect.

Oscar himself has told us what the kindness shown to him in the last six months of his prison life really did for him. He writes in De Profundis that for the first part of his sentence he could only wring his hands in impotent despair and cry, "What an ending, what an appalling ending!" But when the new spirit of kindness came to him, he could say with sincerity: "What a beginning, what a wonderful beginning!" He sums it all up in these words:

"Had I been released after eighteen months, as I hoped to be, I would have left my prison loathing it and every official in it with a bitterness of hatred that would have poisoned my life. I have had six months more of imprisonment, but humanity has been in the prison with us all the time, and now when I go out I shall always remember great kindnesses that I have received here from almost everybody, and on the day of my release I shall give many thanks to many people, and ask to be remembered by them in turn."

This is the man whom Mr. Justice Wills addressed as insensible to any high appeal.

Some time passed before I visited Oscar again. The change in him was extraordinary. He was light-hearted, gay, and looked better than I had ever seen him: clearly the austerity of prison life suited him. He met me with a jest:

"It is you, Frank!" he cried as if astonished, "always original! You come back to prison of your own free-will!"

He declared that the new governor—Major Nelson was his name—had been as kind as possible to him. He had not had a punishment for months, and "Oh, Frank, the joy of reading when you like and writing as you please—the delight of living again!" He was so infinitely improved that his talk delighted me.

"What books have you?" I asked.

"I thought I should like the 'Oedipus Rex,'" he replied gravely; "but I could not read it. It all seemed unreal to me. Then I thought of St. Augustine, but he was worse still. The fathers of the Church were still further away from me; they all found it so easy to repent and change their lives: it does not seem to me easy. At last I got hold of Dante. Dante was what I wanted. I read the 'Purgatorio' all through, forced myself to read it in Italian to get the full savour and significance of it. Dante, too, had been in the depths and drunk the bitter lees of despair. I shall want a little library when I come out, a library of a score of books. I wonder if you will help me to get it. I want Flaubert, Stevenson, Baudelaire, Maeterlinck, Dumas père, Keats, Marlowe, Chatterton, Anatole France, Théophile Gautier, Dante, Goethe, Meredith's poems, and his 'Egoist,' the Song of Solomon, too, Job, and, of course, the Gospels."

"I shall be delighted to get them for you," I said, "if you will send me the list. By the by, I hear that you have been reconciled to your wife; is that true? I should be glad to know it's true."

"I hope it will be all right," he said gravely, "she is very good and kind. I suppose you have heard," he went on, "that my mother died since I came here, and that leaves a great gap in my life.... I always had the greatest admiration and love for my mother. She was a great woman, Frank, a perfect idealist. My father got into trouble once in Dublin, perhaps you have heard about it?"

"Oh, yes," I said, "I have read the case." (It is narrated in the XVII chapter of this book.)

"Well, Frank, she stood up in court and bore witness for him with perfect serenity, with perfect trust and without a shadow of common womanly jealousy. She could not believe that the man she loved could be unworthy, and her conviction was so complete that it communicated itself to the jury: her trust was so noble that they became infected by it, and brought him in guiltless. Extraordinary, was it not? She was quite sure too of the verdict. It is only noble souls who have that assurance and serenity....

"When my father was dying it was the same thing. I always see her sitting there by his bedside with a sort of dark veil over her head: quite silent, quite calm. Nothing ever troubled her optimism. She believed that only good can happen to us. When death came to the man she loved, she accepted it with the same serenity and when my sister died she bore it in the same high way. My sister was a wonderful creature, so gay and high-spirited, 'embodied sunshine,' I used to call her.

"When we lost her, my mother simply took it that it was best for the child. Women have infinitely more courage than men, don't you think? I have never known anyone with such perfect faith as my mother. She was one of the great figures of the world. What she must have suffered over my sentence I don't dare to think: I'm sure she endured agonies. She had great hopes of me. When she was told that she was going to die, and that she could not see me, for I was not allowed to go to her, she said, 'May the prison help him,' and turned her face to the wall.

"She felt about the prison as you do, Frank, and really I think you are both right; it has helped me. There are things I see now that I never saw before. I see what pity means. I thought a work of art should be beautiful and joyous. But now I see that that ideal is insufficient, even shallow; a work of art must be founded on pity; a book or poem which has no pity in it, had better not be written....

"I shall be very lonely when I come out, and I can't stand loneliness and solitude; it is intolerable to me, hateful, I have had too much of it....

"You see, Frank, I am breaking with the past altogether. I am going to write the history of it. I am going to tell how I was tempted and fell, how I was pushed by the man I loved into that dreadful quarrel of his, driven forward to the fight with his father and then left to suffer alone....

"That is the story I am now going to tell. That is the book of pity and of love which I am writing now—a terrible book....

"I wonder would you publish it, Frank? I should like it to appear in The Saturday."

"I'd be delighted to publish anything of yours," I replied, "and happier still to publish something to show that you have at length chosen the better part and are beginning a new life. I'd pay you, too, whatever the work turns out to be worth to me; in any case much more than I pay Bernard Shaw or anyone else." I said this to encourage him.

"I'm sure of that," he answered. "I'll send you the book as soon as I've finished it. I think you'll like it"—and there for the moment the matter ended.

At length I felt sure that all would be well with him. How could I help feeling sure? His mind was richer and stronger than it had ever been; and he had broken with all the dark past. I was overjoyed to believe that he would yet do greater things than he had ever done, and this belief and determination were in him too, as anyone can see on reading what he wrote at this time in prison:

"There is before me so much to do that I would regard it as a terrible tragedy if I died before I was allowed to complete at any rate a little of it. I see new developments in art and life, each one of which is a fresh mode of perfection. I long to live so that I can explore what is no less than a new world to me. Do you want to know what this new world is? I think you can guess what it is. It is the world in which I have been living. Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world....

"I used to live entirely for pleasure. I shunned suffering and sorrow of every kind. I hated both...."

Through the prison bars Oscar had begun to see how mistaken he had been, how much greater, and more salutary to the soul, suffering is than pleasure.

"Out of sorrow have the worlds been built, and at the birth of a child or a star there is pain."


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 One great difference between Judaism and Islâm is that the former is not a proselytising religion, while the latter emphatically is so. All the laws and ordinances of the Pentateuch, all the revelations of the Old Testament, are for the Jew alone, and the Gentile was excluded with jealous care from the enjoyment of any of the divine privileges until Christianity proclaimed that revelation was for the world at large. The Arab, on the contrary, was enjoined to propagate his religion. 'There is no god but God,' and man must be 'resigned to His will,' and if he will not, he must be made to; this is what Islâm or 'resignation' really means.

But, it may be asked, why, if Mohammed preached nothing more than the central truth of Judaism and Christianity, did he not rather accept one or other of these creeds, than found a new one? To answer this question, we must regard Judaism and Christianity not as they are understood now, but as they existed in Arabia in Mohammed’s time. Judaism was effete, Christianity corrupt. The Hebrew nation had fallen, and Magian superstitions and Rabbinic inventions had obscured the primeval simplicity of the Hebrew faith and marred the grandeur of its law. The Christians were forgetful alike of the old revelation and of the new, and neglecting the teachings of their Master, were split up into numerous sects—'Homoousians and Homoiousians, Monothelites and Monophysites, Jacobites and Eutychians,' and the like—who had little in common but the name of Christians, and the cordial hatred with which they regarded each other.

Mohammed certainly wished his religion to be looked upon as a further fulfilment of Christianity, just as Christianity is the fulfilment of Judaism. He regards our Lord with particular veneration, and even goes so far as to call Him the 'Spirit' and 'Word' of God; 'the Messiah, Jesus the son of Mary, is but the apostle of God and His Word, which He cast into Mary and a spirit from Him' (Sûrah Ⅳ, 169). The reservation, 'is but the apostle,' &c., is directed against the misconception of the Christian doctrine which d 2

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 was then prevalent in Arabia, and which was the only one with which Mohammed was acquainted. With the Arab Christian, the Trinity meant nothing more nor less than tritheism, and these three the Father, Virgin-Mother, and Son.

The doctrine of the unity of God, as preached by Mohammed, was a protest against the dualism of Persia as well as the degenerate Christianity of the time and the polytheism of the Arabs who were his contemporaries. Thus the Chapter of Cattle (Ⅵ) commences with the words, 'Praise belongs to God who created the heavens and the earth, and brought into being the darkness and the light,' which negatives the Manichæan theory that the two principles of light and darkness were uncreate and eternal, and by their admixture or antagonism gave birth to the material universe.

As for the angelism and demonology of the Qurʼân, they are a mixture of local superstitions, Persian and Jewish tradition. The system was certainly not due to Mohammed’s invention, but was evolved out of what he had heard from Jewish, Christian, and other sources, and regarded as revelation, and coloured by his individual local beliefs.

It is a curious thing that the rite of circumcision is not mentioned in the Qurʼân; but there is no doubt that Mohammed insisted upon it as a compromise for more cruel and dangerous practices.

The Qurʼân itself is not a formal and consistent code either of morals, laws, or ceremonies.

Revealed 'piecemeal,' particular passages being often promulgated to decide particular cases, it cannot fail to contain many things that are at variance with, or flatly contradict others.

It has, however, a certain unity notwithstanding; for Mohammed had his doctrine of the unity of God, according to the ʿHanîfite conception, always before his mind: he had the immemorial customs of his country and their tribal


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Rh usages to guide him in his decisions, only instead of being bound by these usages he was able, by virtue of his office of prophet, to alter or abrogate such as appeared to him not to conduce to the welfare of society. The religious observances and ceremonies he retained were also to a great extent forced upon him; the injunctions to prayer and fasting were necessary to keep alive the religious fervour of the converts, and, indeed, to give the character of a religion to the movement and distinguish it from a mere political reform. The ceremonies of the pilgrimage could not be entirely done away with. The universal reverence of the Arab for the Kaabah was too favourable and obvious a means for uniting all the tribes into one confederation with one common purpose in view. The traditions of Abraham, the father of their race and the founder of Mohammed′s own religion, as he always declared him to be, no doubt gave the ancient temple a peculiar sanctity in the prophet′s eyes, and although he had at first settled upon Jerusalem as his Qiblah, he afterwards reverted to the Kaabah itself. Here, then, Mohammed found a shrine to which, as well as at which, devotion had been paid from time immemorial: it was the one thing which the scattered Arabian nation had in common—the one thing which gave them even the shadow of a national feeling; and to have dreamed of abolishing it, or even of diminishing the honours paid to it, would have been madness and ruin to his enterprise. He therefore did the next best thing, he cleared it of idols and dedicated it to the service of God. Again, the ‘Hagg was the occasion on which the tribes assembled at Mecca and, therefore, not only the cause of trading and mutual profit amongst themselves, but upon it depended entirely the commercial prosperity of the Qurâis.

It has been objected to Islâm that neither its doctrines nor its rites are original. No religion, certainly no sacred books of a religion, ever possessed entire originality. The great principles of morality, and the noble thoughts which are common to humanity, must find their way into the Scriptures, if these are to have any hold upon men; and


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loeffler, Friedrich

LOEFFLER, Friedrich, German bacteriologist: b. Frankfort-on-the-Oder, 1852; d. 1915. He was educated at Würzburg and Berlin, in 1879 was made assistant in the Imperial Health Office and in 1884 staff physician at the Friedrich Wilhelm Institute, Berlin. Four years later he was appointed to a chair at the University of Greifswald. Loeffler rendered important and lasting services to bacteriology by his original methods of staining, by the discovery of the bacillus of glanders in 1882, and by the discovery of the bacillus of diphtheria. He also investigated the foot-and-mouth disease. In 1887 Professor Loeffler founded the Zentralblatt für Bakteriologie und Parasitik. To it he contributed several articles on professional topics, also articles on malaria in Leyden and Klemperer "Deutsche Klinik" (1903). He

published ‘Vorlesungen über die geschichtliche Entwicklung der Lehre von den Bakterien’ (1887) and ‘Die Schutzimpfung gegen die Maul und Klauensenche’ (1903).


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HAT can we do for the world while we live?

Many men and women would wish to serve mankind, but they are perplexed and their power seems infinitesimal. Despair seizes them; those who have the strongest passion suffer most from the sense of impotence, and are most liable to spiritual ruin through lack of hope.

So long as we think only of the immediate future, it seems that what we can do is not much. It is probably impossible for us to bring the war to an end. We cannot destroy the excessive power of the State or of private property. We cannot, here and now, bring new life into education. In such matters, though we may see the evil, we cannot quickly cure it by any of the ordinary methods of politics. We must recognize that the world is ruled in a wrong spirit, and that a change of spirit will not come from Rh


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246 one day to the next. Our expectations must not be for to-morrow, but for the time when what is thought now by a few shall have become the common thought of many. If we have courage and patience, we can think the thoughts and feel the hopes by which, sooner or later, men will be inspired, and weariness and discouragement will be turned into energy and ardor. For this reason, the first thing we have to do is to be clear in our own minds as to the kind of life we think good and the kind of change that we desire in the world.

The ultimate power of those whose thought is vital is far greater than it seems to men who suffer from the irrationality of contemporary politics. Religious toleration was once the solitary speculation of a few bold philosophers. Democracy, as a theory, arose among a handful of men in Cromwell's army; by them, after the Restoration, it was carried to America, where it came to fruition in the War of Independence. From America, Lafayette and the other Frenchmen who fought by the side of Washington brought the theory of democracy to France, where it united itself with the teaching of Rousseau and inspired the Revolution. Socialism, whatever we may think of its merits,


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Rh is a great and growing power, which is transforming economic and political life; and socialism owes its origin to a very small number of isolated theorists. The movement against the subjection of women, which has become irresistible and is not far from complete triumph, began in the same way with a few impracticable idealists—Mary Wollstonecraft, Shelley, John Stuart Mill. The power of thought, in the long run, is greater than any other human power. Those who have the ability to think and the imagination to think in accordance with men's needs, are likely to achieve the good they aim at sooner or later, though probably not while they are still alive.

But those who wish to gain the world by thought must be content to lose it as a support in the present. Most men go through life without much questioning, accepting the beliefs and practices which they find current, feeling that the world will be their ally if they do not put themselves in opposition to it. New thought about the world is incompatible with this comfortable acquiescence; it requires a certain intellectual detachment, a certain solitary energy, a power of inwardly dominating the world and the outlook that the world engenders. Without


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248 some willingness to be lonely new thought cannot be achieved. And it will not be achieved to any purpose if the loneliness is accompanied by aloofness, so that the wish for union with others dies, or if intellectual detachment leads to contempt. It is because the state of mind required is subtle and difficult, because it is hard to be intellectually detached yet not aloof, that fruitful thought on human affairs is not common, and that most theorists are either conventional or sterile. The right kind of thought is rare and difficult, but it is not impotent. It is not the fear of impotence that need turn us aside from thought if we have the wish to bring new hope into the world.

In seeking a political theory which is to be useful at any given moment, what is wanted is not the invention of a Utopia, but the discovery of the best direction of movement. The direction which is good at one time may be superficially very different from that which is good at another time. Useful thought is that which indicates the right direction for the present time. But in judging what is the right direction there are two general principles which are always applicable.

1. The growth and vitality of individuals and


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Rh communities is to be promoted as far as possible.

2. The growth of one individual or one community is to be as little as possible at the expense of another.

The second of these principles, as applied by an individual in his dealings with others, is the principle of reverence, that the life of another has the same importance which we feel in our own life. As applied impersonally in politics, it is the principle of liberty, or rather it includes the principle of liberty as a part. Liberty in itself is a negative principle; it tells us not to interfere, but does not give any basis for construction. It shows that many political and social institutions are bad and ought to be swept away, but it does not show what ought to be put in their place. For this reason a further principle is required, if our political theory is not to be purely destructive.

The combination of our two principles is not in practice an easy matter. Much of the vital energy of the world runs into channels which are oppressive. The Germans have shown themselves extraordinarily full of vital energy, but unfortunately in a form which seems incompatible with the vitality of their neighbors.


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250 Europe in general has more vital energy than Africa, but it has used its energy to drain Africa, through industrialism, of even such life as the negroes possessed. The vitality of southeastern Europe is being drained to supply cheap labor for the enterprise of American millionaires. The vitality of men has been in the past a hindrance to the development of women, and it is possible that in the near future women may become a similar hindrance to men. For such reasons the principle of reverence, though not in itself sufficient, is of very great importance, and is able to indicate many of the political changes that the world requires.

In order that both principles may be capable of being satisfied, what is needed is a unifying or integration, first of our individual lives, then of the life of the community and of the world, without sacrifice of individuality. The life of an individual, the life of a community, and even the life of mankind, ought to be, not a number of separate fragments but in some sense a whole. When this is the case, the growth of the individual is fostered, and is not incompatible with the growth of other individuals. In this way the two principles are brought into harmony.


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ⅼⅳ it would, indeed, be strange if the writers, however inspired, left no trace in their writings of what they had seen, heard, or read. The New Testament, it is well known, contains much that is not original. Many of the parables &c., as a late eminent Orientalist once pointed out, are to be found in the Talmud. We know that St. Paul drew upon classic Greek sources for many of his most striking utterances, not even disdaining to quote the worldly wisdom of the comedian Menander; and there is at least a curious coincidence between the words used in describing the blindness that fell on the apostle just before his conversion, and its subsequent cure, with the description given by Stesichorus in his 'Palinodia' of a similar incident connected with his own conversion to the worship of the Dioscuri. Even the most divine sentiment in the Lord’s Prayer, 'Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us,' is expressed almost in so many words in the advice given by Nestor to the angered Achilles in the first book of Homer’s Iliad.

Judged then by the standard which we apply to other creeds, Mohammed’s religion stands forth as something strikingly new and original, since it sets before his countrymen, for the first time, the grand conception of one God, which was, as he asserted, the faith of their father Abraham, but which their fetishism had so long obscured.

The Arabs made use of a rhymed and rhythmical prose, the origin of which it is not difficult to imagine. The Arabic language consists for the most part of triliteral roots, i.e. the single words expressing individual ideas consist generally of three consonants each, and the derivative forms expressing modifications of the original idea are not made by affixes and terminations alone, but also by the insertion of letters in the root. Thus ẓaraba means 'he struck,' and qatala, 'he killed,' while maẓrub and maqtul signify 'one struck' and 'one killed.' A sentence, therefore, consists of a series of words which would each require to be expressed in clauses of several words in other languages, and it is easy to see


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Rh What integrates an individual life is a consistent creative purpose or unconscious direction. Instinct alone will not suffice to give unity to the life of a civilized man or woman: there must be some dominant object, an ambition, a desire for scientific or artistic creation, a religious principle, or strong and lasting affections. Unity of life is very difficult for a man or woman who has suffered a certain kind of defeat, the kind by which what should have been the dominant impulse is checked and made abortive. Most professions inflict this kind of defeat upon a man at the very outset. If a man becomes a journalist, he probably has to write for a newspaper whose politics he dislikes; this kills his pride in work and his sense of independence. Most medical men find it very hard to succeed without humbug, by which whatever scientific conscience they may have had is destroyed. Politicians are obliged, not only to swallow the party program but to pretend to be saints, in order to conciliate religious supporters; hardly any man can enter Parliament without hypocrisy. In no profession is there any respect for the native pride without which a man cannot remain whole; the world ruthlessly crushes it out, because it implies


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252, and men desire to enslave others more than they desire to be free themselves. Inward freedom is infinitely precious, and a society which will preserve it is immeasurably to be desired.

The principle of growth in a man is not crushed necessarily by preventing him from doing some definite thing, but it is often crushed by persuading him to do something else. The things that crush growth are those that produce a sense of impotence in the directions in which the vital impulse wishes to be effective. The worst things are those to which the will assents. Often, chiefly from failure of self-knowledge, a man's will is on a lower level than his impulse: his impulse is towards some kind of creation, while his will is towards a conventional career, with a sufficient income and the respect of his contemporaries. The stereotyped illustration is the artist who produces shoddy work to please the public. But something of the artist's definiteness of impulse exists in very many men who are not artists. Because the impulse is deep and dumb, because what is called common sense is often against it, because a young man can only follow it if he is willing to set up his own obscure feelings against the


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Rh wisdom and prudent maxims of elders and friends, it happens in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred that the creative impulse, out of which a free and vigorous life might have sprung, is checked and thwarted at the very outset: the young man consents to become a tool, not an independent workman; a mere means to the fulfilment of others, not the artificer of what his own nature feels to be good. In the moment when he makes this act of consent something dies within him. He can never again become a whole man, never again have the undamaged self-respect, the upright pride, which might have kept him happy in his soul in spite of all outward troubles and difficulties—except, indeed, through conversion and a fundamental change in his way of life.

Outward prohibitions, to which the will gives no assent, are far less harmful than the subtler inducements which seduce the will. A serious disappointment in love may cause the most poignant pain, but to a vigorous man it will not do the same inward damage as is done by marrying for money. The achievement of this or that special desire is not what is essential: what is essential is the direction, the kind of effectiveness which is sought. When the


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Rh how a next following sentence, explanatory of or completing the first, would be much more clear and forcible if it consisted of words of a similar shape and implying similar modifications of other ideas. It follows then that the two sentences would be necessarily symmetrical, and the presence of rhythm would not only please the ear but contribute to the better understanding of the sense, while the rhyme would mark the pause in the sense and emphasize the proposition.

The Qur′ân is written in this rhetorical style, in which the clauses are rhythmical though not symmetrically so, and for the most part end in the same rhyme throughout the chapter.

The Arabic language lends itself very readily to this species of composition, and the Arabs of the desert in the present day employ it to a great extent in their more formal orations, while the literary men of the towns adopt it as the recognised correct style, deliberately imitating the Qur′ân.

That the best of Arab writers has never succeeded in producing anything equal in merit to the Qur′ân itself is not surprising. In the first place, they have agreed beforehand that it is unapproachable, and they have adopted its style as the perfect standard; any deviation from it therefore must of necessity be a defect. Again, with them this style is not spontaneous as with Mohammed and his contemporaries, but is as artificial as though Englishmen should still continue to follow Chaucer as their model, in spite of the changes which their language has undergone. With the prophet the style was natural, and the words were those used in every-day ordinary life, while with the later Arabic authors the style is imitative and the ancient words are introduced as a literary embellishment. The natural consequence is that their attempts look laboured and unreal by the side of his impromptu and forcible eloquence.

That Mohammed, though, should have been able to challenge even his contemporaries to produce anything like the Qur′ân, ‘And if ye are in doubt of what we have revealed


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254 impulse is opposed by will, it is made to feel helpless: it has no longer enough hope to be powerful as a motive. Outward compulsion does not do the same damage unless it produces the same sense of impotence; and it will not produce the same sense of impotence if the impulse is strong and courageous. Some thwarting of special desires inis [sic] unavoidable even in the best imaginable community, since some men's desires, unchecked, lead to the oppression or destruction of others. In a good community Napoleon could not have been allowed the profession of his choice, but he might have found happiness as a pioneer in Western America. He could not have found happiness as a City clerk, and no tolerable organization of society would compel him to become a City clerk.

The integration of an individual life requires that it should embody whatever creative impulse a man may possess, and that his education should have been such as to elicit and fortify this impulse. The integration of a community requires that the different creative impulses of different men and women should work together towards some common life, some common purpose, not necessarily conscious, in which all the members of the community find a help to their


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Rh individual fulfilment. Most of the activities that spring from vital impulses consist of two parts: one creative, which furthers one's own life and that of others with the same kind of impulse or circumstances, and one possessive, which hinders the life of some group with a different kind of impulse or circumstances. For this reason, much of what is in itself most vital may nevertheless work against life, as, for example, seventeenth-century Puritanism did in England, or as nationalism does throughout Europe at the present day. Vitality easily leads to strife or oppression, and so to loss of vitality. War, at its outset, integrates the life of a nation, but it disintegrates the life of the world, and in the long run the life of a nation too, when it is as severe as the present war.

The war has made it clear that it is impossible to produce a secure integration of the life of a single community while the relations between civilized countries are governed by aggressiveness and suspicion. For this reason any really powerful movement of reform will have to be international. A merely national movement is sure to fail through fear of danger from without. Those who desire a better world, or even a radical improvement in their


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256 own country, will have to coöperate with those who have similar desires in other countries, and to devote much of their energy to overcoming that blind hostility which the war has intensified. It is not in partial integrations, such as patriotism alone can produce, that any ultimate hope is to be found. The problem is, in national and international questions as in the individual life, to keep what is creative in vital impulses, and at the same time to turn into other channels the part which is at present destructive.

Men's impulses and desires may be divided into those that are creative and those that are possessive. Some of our activities are directed to creating what would not otherwise exist, others are directed towards acquiring or retaining what exists already. The typical creative impulse is that of the artist; the typical possessive impulse is that of property. The best life is that in which creative impulses play the largest part and possessive impulses the smallest. The best institutions are those which produce the greatest possible creativeness and the least possessiveness compatible with self-preservation. Possessiveness may be defensive or aggressive: in the criminal law it is defensive, and


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Rh in criminals it is aggressive. It may perhaps be admitted that the criminal law is less abominable than the criminal, and that defensive possessiveness is unavoidable so long as aggressive possessiveness exists. But not even the most purely defensive forms of possessiveness are in themselves admirable; indeed, as soon as they are strong they become hostile to the creative impulses. "Take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or What shall we drink, or Wherewithal shall we be clothed?" Whoever has known a strong creative impulse has known the value of this precept in its exact and literal sense: it is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly. The State and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to enjoy. Since the material goods of the world must be divided among the population, and since some men are by nature brigands, there must be defensive possession, which will


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258 be regulated, in a good community, by some principle of impersonal justice. But all this is only the preface to a good life or good political institutions, in which creation will altogether outweigh possession, and distributive justice will exist as an uninteresting matter of course.

The supreme principle, both in politics and in private life, should be to promote all that is creative, and so to diminish the impulses and desires that center round possession. The State at present is very largely an embodiment of possessive impulses: internally, it protects the rich against the poor; externally, it uses force for the exploitation of inferior races, and for competition with other States. Our whole economic system is concerned exclusively with possession; yet the production of goods is a form of creation, and except in so far as it is irredeemably mechanical and monotonous, it might afford a vehicle for creative impulses. A great deal might be achieved towards this end by forming the producers of a certain kind of commodity into an autonomous democracy, subject to State control as regards the price of their commodity but not as to the manner of its production.


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Rh Education, marriage, and religion are essentially creative, yet all three have been vitiated by the intrusion of possessive motives. Education is usually treated as a means of prolonging the status quo by instilling prejudices, rather than of creating free thought and a noble outlook by the example of generous feeling and the stimulus of mental adventure. In marriage, love, which is creative, is kept in chains by jealousy, which is possessive. Religion, which should set free the creative vision of the spirit, is usually more concerned to repress the life of instinct and to combat the subversiveness of thought. In all these ways the fear that grows out of precarious possession has replaced the hope inspired by creative force. The wish to plunder others is recognized, in theory, to be bad; but the fear of being plundered is little better. Yet these two motives between them dominate nine-tenths of politics and private life.

The creative impulses in different men are essentially harmonious, since what one man creates cannot be a hindrance to what another is wishing to create. It is the possessive impulses that involve conflict. Although, morally and politically, the creative and possessive impulses are opposites, yet psychologically either


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260 passes easily into the other, according to the accidents of circumstance and opportunity. The genesis of impulses and the causes which make them change ought to be studied; education and social institutions ought to be made such as to strengthen the impulses which harmonize in different men, and to weaken those that involve conflict. I have no doubt that what might be accomplished in this way is almost unlimited.

It is rather through impulse than through will that individual lives and the life of the community can derive the strength unity of a single direction. Will is of two kinds, of which one is directed outward and the other inward. The first, which is directed outward, is called into play by external obstacles, either the opposition of others or the technical difficulties of an undertaking. This kind of will is an expression of strong impulse or desire, whenever instant success is impossible; it exists in all whose life is vigorous, and only decays when their vital force is enfeebled. It is necessary to success in any difficult enterprise, and without it great achievement is very rare. But the will which is directed inward is only necessary in so far as there is an inner conflict of


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Rh or desires; a perfectly harmonious nature would have no occasion for inward will. Such perfect harmony is of course a scarcely realizable ideal: in all men impulses arise which are incompatible with their central purpose, and which must be checked if their life as a whole is not to be a failure. But this will happen least with those whose central impulses are strongest; and it will happen less often in a society which aims at freedom than in a society like ours, which is full of artificial incompatibilities created by antiquated institutions and a tyrannous public opinion. The power to exert inward will when the occasion arises must always be needed by those who wish their lives to embody some central purpose, but with better institutions the occasions when inward will is necessary might be made fewer and less important. This result is very much to be desired, because when will checks impulses which are only accidentally harmful, it diverts a force which might be spent on overcoming outward obstacles, and if the impulses checked are strong and serious, it actually diminishes the vital force available. A life full of inhibitions is likely not to remain a very vigorous life but to become listless and without zest. Impulse


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262 tends to die when it is constantly held in check; and if it does not die, it is apt to work underground, and issue in some form much worse than that in which it has been checked. For these reasons the necessity for using inward will ought to be avoided as much as possible, and consistency of action ought to spring rather from consistency of impulse than from control of impulse by will.

The unifying of life ought not to demand the suppression of the casual desires that make amusement and play; on the contrary, everything ought to be done to make it easy to combine the main purposes of life with all kinds of pleasure that are not in their nature harmful. Such things as habitual drunkenness, drugs, cruel sports, or pleasure in inflicting pain are essentially harmful, but most of the amusements that civilized men naturally enjoy are either not harmful at all or only accidentally harmful through some effect which might be avoided in a better society. What is needed is, not asceticism or a drab Puritanism, but capacity for strong impulses and desires directed towards large creative ends. When such impulses and desires are vigorous, they bring with them, of themselves, what is needed to make a good life.


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Rh But although amusement and adventure ought to have their share, it is impossible to create a good life if they are what is mainly desired. Subjectivism, the habit of directing thought and desire to our own states of mind rather than to something objective, inevitably makes life fragmentary and unprogressive. The man to whom amusement is the end of life tends to lose interest gradually in the things out of which he has been in the habit of obtaining amusement, since he does not value these things on their own account, but on account of the feelings which they arouse in him. When they are no longer amusing, boredom drives him to seek some new stimulus, which fails him in its turn. Amusement consists in a series of moments without any essential continuity; a purpose which unifies life is one which requires some prolonged activity, and is like building a monument rather than a child's castle in the sand.

Subjectivism has other forms beside the mere pursuit of amusement. Many men, when they are in love, are more interested in their own emotion than in the object of their love; such love does not lead to any essential union, but leaves fundamental separateness


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264. As soon as the emotion grows less vivid the experience has served its purpose, and there seems no motive for prolonging it. In another way, the same evil of subjectivism was fostered by Protestant religion and morality, since they directed attention to sin and the state of the soul rather than to the outer world and our relations with it. None of these forms of subjectivism can prevent a man's life from being fragmentary and isolated. Only a life which springs out of dominant impulses directed to objective ends can be a satisfactory whole, or be intimately united with the lives of others.

The pursuit of pleasure and the pursuit of virtue alike suffer from subjectivism: Epicureanism and Stoicism are infected with the same taint. Marcus Aurelius, enacting good laws in order that he might be virtuous, is not an attractive figure. Subjectivism is a natural outcome of a life in which there is much more thought than action: while outer things are being remembered or desired, not actually experienced, they seem to become mere ideas. What they are in themselves becomes less interesting to us than the effects which they produce in our own minds. Such a result tends to be brought about by increasing civilization, because


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Rh civilization continually diminishes the need for vivid action and enhances the opportunities for thought. But thought will not have this bad result if it is active thought, directed towards achieving some purpose; it is only passive thought that leads to subjectivism. What is needed is to keep thought in intimate union with impulses and desires, making it always itself an activity with an objective purpose. Otherwise, thought and impulse become enemies, to the great detriment of both.

In order to make the lives of average men and women less fragmentary and separate, and to give greater opportunity for carrying out creative impulses, it is not enough to know the goal we wish to reach, or to proclaim the excellence of what we desire to achieve. It is necessary to understand the effect of institutions and beliefs upon the life of impulse, and to discover ways of improving this effect by a change in institutions. And when this intellectual work has been done, our thought will still remain barren unless we can bring it into relation with some powerful political force. The only powerful political force from which any help is to be expected in bringing about such changes as seem needed is Labor. The


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266 changes required are very largely such as Labor may be expected to welcome, especially during the time of hardship after the war. When the war is over, labor discontent is sure to be very prevalent throughout Europe, and to constitute a political force by means of which a great and sweeping reconstruction may be effected.

The civilized world has need of fundamental change if it is to be saved from decay—change both in its economic structure and in its philosophy of life. Those of us who feel the need of change must not sit still in dull despair: we can, if we choose, profoundly influence the future. We can discover and preach the kind of change that is required—the kind that preserves what is positive in the vital beliefs of our time, and, by eliminating what is negative and inessential, produces a synthesis to which all that is not purely reactionary can give allegiance. As soon as it has become clear what kind of change is required, it will be possible to work out its parts in more detail. But until the war is ended there is little use in detail, since we do not know what kind of world the war will leave. The only thing that seems indubitable is that much new thought will be


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Rh in the new world produced by the war. Traditional views will give little help. It is clear that men's most important actions are not guided by the sort of motives that are emphasized in traditional political philosophies. The impulses by which the war has been produced and sustained come out of a deeper region than that of most political argument. And the opposition to the war on the part of those few who have opposed it comes from the same deep region. A political theory, if it is to hold in times of stress, must take account of the impulses that underlie explicit thought: it must appeal to them, and it must discover how to make them fruitful rather than destructive.

Economic systems have a great influence in promoting or destroying life. Except slavery, the present industrial system is the most destructive of life that has ever existed. Machinery and large-scale production are ineradicable, and must survive in any better system which is to replace the one under which we live. Industrial federal democracy is probably the best direction for reform to take.

Philosophies of life, when they are widely believed, also have a very great influence on the vitality of a community. The most widely


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268 philosophy of life at present is that what matters most to a man's happiness is his income. This philosophy, apart from other demerits, is harmful because it leads men to aim at a result rather than an activity, an enjoyment of material goods in which men are not differentiated, rather than a creative impulse which embodies each man's individuality. More refined philosophies, such as are instilled by higher education, are too apt to fix attention on the past rather than the future, and on correct behavior rather than effective action. It is not in such philosophies that men will find the energy to bear lightly the weight of tradition and of ever-accumulating knowledge.

The world has need of a philosophy, or a religion, which will promote life. But in order to promote life it is necessary to value something other than mere life. Life devoted only to life is animal without any real human value, incapable of preserving men permanently from weariness and the feeling that all is vanity. If life is to be fully human it must serve some end which seems, in some sense, outside human life, some end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or truth or beauty. Those who best promote life do not have life for their


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ⅼⅵ unto our servant, then bring a chapter like it. . . But if ye do it not, and ye surely shall do it not, &c.,’ is at first sight surprising, but, as Nöldeke has pointed out, this challenge really refers much more to the subject than to the mere style,—to the originality of the conception of the unity of God and of a revelation supposed to be couched in God′s own words. Any attempt at such a work must of necessity have had all the weakness and want of prestige which attaches to an imitation. This idea is by no means foreign to the genius of the old Arabs; thus the learned grammarian and rhetorician ‘Harîrî excuses himself in the preface to his celebrated ‘Assemblies’ for any shortcomings, which might possibly be detected in a composition professedly modelled on that of another, by quoting an ancient poem:  ‘′Twas this affected me, that while I lay Snatching a breath of sleep for drowsiness, There wept a dove upon the Aikah bough Trilling her weeping forth with sweetest notes: Ah, had I wept—ere she began to weep— For Sâudâ′s love, my soul had found relief! But ′twas her weeping that excited mine, And he who comes first must be always best!’

Amongst a people who believed firmly in witchcraft and soothsaying and who, though passionately fond of poetry, believed that every poet had his familiar spirit who inspired his utterances, it was no wonder that the prophet should be taken for ‘a soothsayer,’ for ‘one possessed with an evil spirit,’ or for ‘an infatuated poet .’

Each chapter of the Qur′ân is called in Arabic a sûrah, a word which signifies a course of bricks in a wall, and is generally used in the body of the work for any connected or continuous portion complete in itself.


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Rh purpose. They aim rather at what seems like a gradual incarnation, a bringing into our human existence of something eternal, something that appears to imagination to live in a heaven remote from strife and failure and the devouring jaws of Time. Contact with this eternal world—even if it be only a world of our imagining—brings a strength and a fundamental peace which cannot be wholly destroyed by the struggles and apparent failures of our temporal life. It is this happy contemplation of what is eternal that Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. To those who have once known it, it is the key of wisdom.

What we have to do practically is different for each one of us, according to our capacities and opportunities. But if we have the life of the spirit within us, what we must do and what we must avoid will become apparent to us.

By contact with what is eternal, by devoting our life to bringing something of the Divine into this troubled world, we can make our own lives creative even now, even in the midst of the cruelty and strife and hatred that surround us on every hand. To make the individual life creative is far harder in a community based on possession than it would be in such a


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270 as human effort may be able to build up in the future. Those who are to begin the regeneration of the world must face loneliness, opposition, poverty, obloquy. They must be able to live by truth and love, with a rational unconquerable hope; they must be honest and wise, fearless, and guided by a consistent purpose. A body of men and women so inspired will conquer—first the difficulties and perplexities of their individual lives, then, in time, though perhaps only in a long time, the outer world. Wisdom and hope are what the world needs; and though it fights against them, it gives its respect to them in the end.

When the Goths sacked Rome, St. Augustine wrote the "City of God," putting a spiritual hope in place of the material reality that had been destroyed. Throughout the centuries that followed St. Augustine's hope lived and gave life, while Rome sank to a village of hovels. For us, too, it is necessary to create a new hope, to build up by our thought a better world than the one which is hurling itself into ruin. Because the times are bad, more is required of us than would be required in normal times. Only a supreme fire of thought and spirit can save future generations from the death that has


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Rh the generation which we knew and loved.

It has been my good fortune to come in contact as a teacher with young men of many different nations—young men in whom hope was alive, in whom the creative energy existed that would have realized in the world some part at least of the imagined beauty by which they lived. They have been swept into the war, some on one side, some on the other. Some are still fighting, some are maimed for life, some are dead; of those who survive it is to be feared that many will have lost the life of the spirit, that hope will have died, that energy will be spent, and that the years to come will be only a weary journey towards the grave. Of all this tragedy, not a few of those who teach seem to have no feeling: with ruthless logic, they prove that these young men have been sacrificed unavoidably for some coldly abstract end; undisturbed themselves, they lapse quickly into comfort after any momentary assault of feeling. In such men the life of the spirit is dead. If it were living, it would go out to meet the spirit in the young, with a love as poignant as the love of father or mother. It would be unaware of the bounds of self; their tragedy would be its own. Something would cry out: "No, this is


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272 not right; this is not good; this is not a holy cause, in which the brightness of youth is destroyed and dimmed. It is we, the old, who have sinned; we have sent these young men to the battlefield for our evil passions, our spiritual death, our failure to live generously out of the warmth of the heart and out of the living vision of the spirit. Let us come out of this death, for it is we who are dead, not the young men who have died through our fear of life. Their very ghosts have more life than we: they hold us up for ever to the shame and obloquy of all the ages to come. Out of their ghosts must come life, and it is we whom they must vivify."


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Rh The word Qur′ân, ‘a reading,’ comes from the verb qara′a, ‘to read,’ though some lexicographers derive it from qarana, ‘to join,’ and interpret it as meaning the ‘collected whole.’

It is also called El Forqân, ‘the discrimination,’ a word borrowed from the Hebrew and also applied in the Qur′ân to divine inspiration generally.

The individual portions of the Qur′ân were not always written down immediately after their revelation, as we find that Mohammed often repeated them several times until he had learnt them by heart, and the book itself shows that he occasionally forgot them and even altered and supplemented them: ‘Whatever verse we may annul or cause thee to forget, we will bring a better one than it, or one like it’ (Chapter II, ver. 100). On other occasions he employed an amanuensis, as, for instance, Abdallah ibn Sa′hd ibn Abî Sar‘h (see Part I, p. 126, note 2) and Zâid ibn âbit; and tradition relates that he would frequently direct in which Surah the passage dictated was to be placed. That the Qur′ân was, or that even the individual Sûrahs were, however, arranged in the present order by the prophet himself is impossible, both from internal evidence and that of tradition.

At the prophet′s death no collected edition of the Qur′ân existed. Scattered fragments were in the possession of certain of his followers, written down at different times and on the most heterogeneous materials, but by far the greater portion was preserved only in the memories of men whom death might at any moment carry off. The death of many Muslim warriors at the battle of Yemâmah opened the eyes of the early Caliphs to the danger that the ‘Book of God’ might be, ere long, irrevocably lost: they accordingly provided, to the best of their power, against such a contingency. Abu Bekr,—or rather Omar, during his reign,—was the first to take the matter in hand, and employed Zâid ibn âbit the Ansârî, a native of Medînah, who had acted as amanuensis to Mohammed, to collect and arrange the text. This he did from ‘palm-leaves, skins, blade-bones, and the hearts of men,’ and presented to the Caliph a copy


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loess

LOESS, or, a loamy deposit of Pleistocene Age, abundantly developed in the valleys of the Rhine, the Danube, the Rhone and many of their tributaries. It is a pulverulent yellowish-gray or brownish loam, homogeneous and non-plastic, and consists principally of clay with small angular grains of quartz, and extremely minute scales of mica, together with a larger or smaller admixture of carbonate of lime and some iron oxide. It has a tendency to cleave in vertical planes, and thus forms cliffs where streams intersect it. The organic remains of the loess consist principally of land-shells of existing species, but now and again fresh-water shells are met with. Occasionally, also, the remains of man and the Pleistocene mammals are encountered. The deposit varies from a small thickness up to nearly 300 feet, and occurs at greatly differing levels, so that more than one agency would seem to have been active in its formation. Escaping floodwaters from glaciers are believed to have made some of the deposit; some of it may have been the result of weathering and rain-washings. The European loess is undoubtedly associated with the glacial deposits of the Continent, and in North America the same relationship obtains. Many geologists of the United States Geological Survey maintain that the accumulations which cover enormous areas in the great basin traversed by the Mississippi and its affluents are essentially fluviatile. Richthofen believes the Chinese accumulation, the largest in the world, to have been of Æolian origin, and this theory of wind-blown material has also been advanced with respect to deposits in the United States. There is no unanimity of opinion as to its origin, but loess is probably in part fluviatile and in part wind-blown. Consult Sixth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey (1888); Chamberlin and Salisbury, ‘The Driftless Area of the Upper Mississippi Valley’; McGee, ‘The Pleistocene History of Northeastern Iowa,’ in the United States Geological Survey, Eleventh Annual Report (1891); Geikie, ‘Prehistoric Europe’ (1881).

title: The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loess


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ⅼⅷ of the Qur′ân, which did not probably differ greatly from that which we now possess. As we have already seen, the whole was strung together without any reference to the chronological order, and with very little regard to the logical connection of various passages. The longer Sûrahs were placed at the beginning and the short ones at the end, although the order of their revelation was for the most part just the reverse. And, lastly, many odd verses appear to have been inserted into various Surahs for no other reason than that they suit the rhyme.

The text was so far fixed by Zâid, but not the reading of it. In the first place, the vowel points, which make often a very great difference in the meaning of a word, were probably hardly ever, if at all, used; again, many persons were still alive who themselves remembered portions of the Qur′ân by heart, but who did not agree as to individual words, or who remembering the sense only substituted some of the locutions of their own tribe for the actual words of Mohammed.

These tribal dialects often differed diametrically in the use of particular words; thus i‘hfa′un means ‘to conceal’ in the dialect of one tribe and ‘to display’ in that of another; when such words occurred, as they often do, in the Qur′ân, they could not fail to give rise to disputes as to their interpretation.

In the present recension of the Qur′ân there are comparatively few various readings recognised, but it is clear that great variations existed from the very first. On more than one occasion Mohammed himself dictated the same passage to different persons with different readings; and the ‘traditional saying’ ascribed to him, that ‘the Qur′ân was revealed according to seven modes of reading,’ shows what latitute he himself allowed. The other interpretation of this tradition, namely, that ‘the Qur′ân may be read according to the seven Arabic dialects,’ was obviously invented to check the tendency to perversion of the text according to individual fancy, and is plainly refuted by the fact that the persons to whom the saying was uttered,


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loewe, Wilhelm

LOEWE, lė'vĕ, Wilhelm (also called ), German politician: b. Olvenstedt, near Magdeburg 1814; d. 1886. He was educated at Halle, and adopted the medical profession. Elected in 1848 to the Frankfort Parliament, he acted with the extreme party of democracy; became first vice-president of the Parliament; and later, at Stuttgart, was its president. Charged with sedition in this, which was considered a revolutionary procedure, and once acquitted, he was nevertheless sentenced to life imprisonment for contumacy. After some vears in Switzerland, France and England, he came to this country, and for eight years practised medicine in New York. Availing himself of the amnesty in 1861, he returned to Germany, and in 1863 was elected to the Prussian House of Deputies. Four years later he was a Progressist member of the North German Reichstag. Disagreeing with his party in 1874 on the military law, he attempted to form a new Liberal party. He favored the

policy of high protection adopted in 1879. In the elections of 1881 he lost his seat.


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Rh and who had appealed to the prophet to decide upon the reading of a certain text, were both of the tribe of Qurâis.

At length, some twenty years afterwards, the Caliph Othmân, alarmed at the bitter feelings and open quarrels which these differences of reading and interpretation had already engendered, determined to prevent the Muslims from differing amongst themselves in their way of reading the word of God as the Jews and Christians did. He accordingly appointed a commission, consisting of Zâid, the original editor, with three men of the Qurâis (Mohammed′s own tribe), to decide, once for all, upon the text and to fix the reading definitely according to the pure Qurâis idiom.

When this edition was completed, Othmân sent copies to all the principal cities in the empire, and caused all the previous copies to be burned. These copies were perhaps not themselves free from small discrepances; the few slight various readings which have, as I have shown, crept in, are most of them mere matters of orthography, and the rest are unimportant to the general sense. The last named will be found mentioned in the notes to the passages in which they occur in the course of the following translation.

Othmân′s recension has remained the authorised text, and has been adopted by all schools of Mohammedan theologians from the time it was made ( 660) until the present day.

In this no further attempt was made at chronological arrangement than in the preceding one. The individual Surahs have prefixed to them the name of the place, Mecca or Medînah, at which they were revealed; but this indication, though derived from authentic tradition, is not a sufficient guide, since in many places verses have been inserted in a Meccan Sûrah which were evidently revealed at Medînah, and vice versâ. To clear away this difficulty, and to propose an intelligible chronological arrangement of the Sûrahs, has been the aim of scholars, both Arabic and European; but no one has treated the subject in so


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ⅼⅹ critical or masterly a manner as Nöldeke, and his arrangement may be taken as the best which Arabic tradition, combined with European criticism, can furnish.

To arrive at a decision on this point we must consider first the historical event, if any, to which each text refers; next, the style generally; and lastly, the individual expressions used. Thus, in addressing the Meccans the words yâ aiyuha ′nnâs, ‘O ye folk!’ occur, while the expression yâ aiyuha ′llaîn âmanû is used in speaking to the people of Medînah; though sometimes the former phrase occurs in a verse of a Medînah Surah.

The Sûrahs resolve themselves into two great classes, those revealed at Mecca and those revealed at Medînah after the flight; and these are easily distinguished both by their style and subject-matter. The earlier ones especially are grander in style, and testify in every verse to the mental exaltation of the prophet and the earnest belief which he certainly had at this time in the reality and truth of his divine mission.

The Qur′ân falls naturally into these two classes, which represent, in fact, the first development of Mohammed′s prophetic office at Mecca, and the later career as a leader and lawgiver after the flight at Medinah.

Sûrahs belonging to the first period of his career are therefore ascribed to Mecca, and those of the latter period to Medinah, although the actual place at which they were delivered may be in certain cases doubtful.

One of the next earliest Sûrahs is that entitled Abu Laheb. Mohammed had at length called together his clansmen, the Banû Hâshim, and bade them accept the new doctrine of Allah′s unity. Hereupon ‘Abd el ′Huzzah, surnamed Abu Laheb, ‘he of the flame,’ indignantly exclaimed, ‘Perdition to you! is that what thou hast called us for?’ Mohammed then proclaimed the Sûrah bearing Abu Laheb′s name, in which he enunciates a terrible curse against him and his wife Umm Gemîl, and made of him an irreconcilable foe.

The ⅭⅥth Sûrah also belongs undoubtedly to an early


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Rh period. In it Mohammed bids the Qurâis ‘serve the Lord of this House,’ for the two trading caravans they yearly sent out in winter and summer respectively.

In the Meccan Sûrahs Mohammed′s one and steady purpose is to bring his hearers to a belief in the one only God; this he does by powerful rhetorical displays rather than logical arguments, by appealing to their feelings rather than their reason; by setting forth the manifestations of God in his works; by calling nature to witness to His presence; and by proclaiming His vengeance against those who associate other gods with Him, or attribute offspring to Him. The appeal was strengthened by glowing pictures of the happiness in store for those who should believe, and by frightful descriptions of the everlasting torments prepared for the unbelievers.

The short Surah entitled ‘Unity’ is said, on the traditional authority of Mohammed himself, to be equivalent in value to two-thirds of the Qur′ân.

‘Say, “He is God, one God the eternal. He begets not, and is not begotten; nor is there like unto Him, one.”’

This protest is not aimed at the Christian doctrines alone, for the Arab, as we have seen, asserted that their angels and deities were daughters of Allâh, the supreme God.

In the earlier chapters, too, the prophetic inspiration, the earnest conviction of the truth of his mission, and the violent emotion which his sense of responsibility caused him are plainly shown.

The style is curt, grand, and often almost sublime; the expressions are full of poetical feeling, and the thoughts are earnest and passionate, though sometimes dim and confused, indicating the mental excitement and doubt through which they struggled to light.

In the second period of the Meccan Surahs, Mohammed appears to have conceived the idea of still further severing himself from the idolatry of his compatriots, and of giving to the supreme deity Allâh another title, Ar-Ra‘hmân, ‘the merciful one.’

The Meccans, however, seem to have taken these for


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loewy, Maurice

LOEWY, lė-vē', Maurice, French astronomer: b. Vienna, 1833; d. Paris, 16 Oct. 1907. He was given a position in the observatory at Paris by Leverrier, and after the latter's death assisted Mouchez in the observatory of Montsouris, becoming director in 1896. He was noted for his invention of the equatorial-coudé, or Elbow-equatorial, in which the observer remains seated at the upper end of the polar axis of the telescope, as if working with a microscope on a table, with the means of directing his view to any part of the heavens under his control. He also devised improved methods of determining the constants of astronomical refraction and aberration. He was joint author (with Puiseux) of ‘Atlas photographie de la lune’ in six volumes (1896-1908).


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ⅼⅻ the names of separate deities, and the name is abandoned in the later chapters.

In the Sûrahs of the second Meccan period we first find the long stories of the prophets of olden time, especial stress being laid upon the punishment which fell upon their contemporaries for disbelief; the moral is always the same, namely, that Mohammed came under precisely similar circumstances, and that a denial of the truth of his mission would bring on his fellow-citizens the self-same retribution.

They also show the transition stage between the intense and poetical enthusiasm of the early Meccan chapters and the calm teaching of the later Medînah ones. This change is gradual, and even in the later and most prosaic we find occasionally passages in which the old prophetic fire flashes out once more.

The three periods again are marked by the oaths which occur throughout the Qur′ân. In the first period they are very frequent and often long, the whole powers of nature being invoked to bear witness to the unity of God and the mission of His Apostle; in the second period they are shorter and of rarer occurrence; in the last period they are absent altogether.

To understand the Medînah Sûrahs we must bear in mind Mohammed′s position with respect to the various parties in that city.

In Mecca he had been a prophet with little honour in his own country, looked on by some as a madman, and by others as an impostor, both equally grievous to him, while his following consisted only of the poorest and meanest of his fellow-townsmen.

His own clansmen, for the reason that they were his clansmen and for no other, resented the affronts against him.

In Medînah he appears as a military leader and a prince, though as yet possessing far from absolute authority. Around him in the city were, first, the true believers who had fled with him, El Muhâgerîn; next, the


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Rh of Yarib, who had joined him and who were called El Ansâr, ‘the helpers;’ and lastly, a large class who are spoken of by the uncomplimentary name of Munâfiqûn or ‘hypocrites,’ consisting of those who went over to his side from fear or compulsion, and lastly those ‘in whose heart is sickness,’ who, though believing on him, were prevented by tribal or family ties from going over to him openly.

Abdallâh ibn Ubai was a chief whose influence operated strongly against Mohammed, and the latter was obliged to treat him for a long time almost as an equal, even after he had lost his political power.

The other party at Medînah was composed of the Jewish tribes settled in and around the city of Yarib. The Jews were at first looked to as the most natural and likely supporters of the new religion, which was to confirm their own.

These various parties together with the pagan Arabs of Mecca and the Christians are the persons with whom the Medînah Sûrahs chiefly deal.

The style of the Medînah Sûrahs resembles that of the third period of the Meccan revelations, the more matter-of-fact nature of the incidents related or the precepts given accounting in a great measure for the more prosaic language in which they are expressed.

As in the Meccan Sûrahs it is possible to arrive at a tolerably accurate notion of their chronological order by noting the events to which they refer, and comparing them with the history itself; although the doubtful authority of many of the traditions and the frequent vagueness of the allusions in the Qur′ân itself leave much uncertain.

In the Medînah Sûrahs the prophet is no longer merely trying to convert his hearers by examples, promises, and warnings; he addresses them as their prince and general, praising or blaming them for their conduct, and giving them laws and precepts as occasion required.

Nöldeke has given a masterly analysis of the various historical and other allusions, and has reduced as far as


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Lofftz, Ludwig

LOFFTZ, lėftz, Ludwig, German painter: b. Darmstadt, 1845; d. 1910. He studied at Nuremberg under Kreling and Raupp and at Munich under Diez. In 1879 he became professor at the Academy of Munich, and from 1891 to 1899 was director of this institution. His best-known paintings are ‘Cardinal Playing the Organ’ (1876; exhibited in New York 1909); portrait of Liszt; ‘Avarice and Love’ (1879, owned by W. H. Vanderbilt, New York); ‘Erasmus,’ in the Stuttgart Museum; ‘Pietà,’ and ‘Eurydice’ (1898), both in the New Pinakothek, Munich, ‘Assumption of the Virgin’ (1889), in Freising Cathedral. In his later years he painted several landscapes, but his greatest success lay in his work as a teacher.


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ⅼⅹⅳ possible the heterogeneous mass of materials to such order that we may accept his arrangement as at least the most accurate hitherto proposed.

Since, however, many passages are no doubt misplaced and inserted in Sûrahs to which they did not originally belong, nothing but a comprehensive view of the contents of the whole Qur′ân, studied side by side with the history of Mohammed and his contemporaries, will enable us to arrive at an actual decision on the exact chronological sequence of the revelation.

To assist in the investigation of this most important subject I have subjoined a précis of the contents of each chapter.

The following is Nöldeke′s chronological order of the Sûrahs:—

First Period (from the first to the fifth year of Mohammed′s mission): ⅩⅭⅥ, ⅬⅩⅩⅣ, ⅭⅪ, ⅭⅥ, ⅭⅧ, ⅭⅣ, ⅭⅦ, ⅭⅡ, ⅭⅤ, ⅩⅭⅡ, ⅩⅭ, ⅩⅭⅣ, ⅩⅭⅢ. ⅩⅭⅦ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅥ, ⅩⅭⅠ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩ, ⅬⅩⅧ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅦ, ⅩⅭⅤ, ⅭⅢ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅤ, ⅬⅩⅩⅢ, ⅭⅠ, ⅩⅭⅨ, ⅬⅩⅩⅫ, ⅬⅩⅩⅪ, ⅬⅢ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅣ, Ⅽ, ⅬⅩⅩⅨ, ⅬⅩⅩⅦ, ⅬⅩⅩⅧ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅧ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅨ, ⅬⅩⅩⅤ, ⅬⅩⅩⅩⅢ, ⅬⅩⅨ, ⅬⅠ, ⅬⅡ, ⅬⅥ, ⅬⅩⅩ, ⅬⅤ, ⅭⅫ, ⅭⅨ, ⅭⅩⅢ, ⅭⅩⅣ, Ⅰ.

Second Period (the fifth and sixth year of his mission): ⅬⅣ, ⅩⅩⅩⅦ, ⅬⅩⅪ, ⅬⅩⅩⅥ, ⅩⅬⅣ, Ⅼ, ⅩⅩ, ⅩⅩⅥ, ⅩⅤ, ⅩⅨ, ⅩⅩⅩⅧ, ⅩⅩⅩⅥ, ⅩⅬⅢ, ⅬⅩⅫ, ⅬⅩⅦ, ⅩⅩⅢ, ⅩⅪ, ⅩⅩⅤ, ⅩⅦ, ⅩⅩⅦ, ⅩⅧ.

Third Period (from the seventh year to the flight): ⅩⅩⅫ, ⅩⅬⅠ, ⅩⅬⅤ, ⅩⅥ, ⅩⅩⅩ, Ⅺ, ⅩⅣ, Ⅻ, ⅩⅬ, ⅩⅩⅧ, ⅩⅩⅩⅨ, ⅩⅩⅨ, ⅩⅩⅪ, ⅩⅬⅡ, Ⅹ, ⅩⅩⅩⅣ, ⅩⅩⅩⅤ, Ⅶ, ⅩⅬⅥ, Ⅵ, ⅩⅢ.

Ⅱ, ⅩⅭⅧ, ⅬⅩⅣ, ⅬⅫ, Ⅷ, ⅩⅬⅦ, Ⅲ, ⅬⅪ, ⅬⅦ, Ⅳ, ⅬⅩⅤ, ⅬⅨ, ⅩⅩⅩⅢ, ⅬⅩⅢ, ⅩⅩⅣ, ⅬⅧ, ⅩⅫ, ⅩⅬⅧ, ⅬⅩⅥ, ⅬⅩ, ⅭⅩ, ⅩⅬⅨ, Ⅸ, Ⅴ.

The mysterious letters which are placed at the beginning of certain chapters of the Qur′ân are explained in


text:
The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Lofoten

LOFOTEN, lō-fō'ten, or LOFODDEN, Norway, a group of islands off the northwest coast, stretching southwest to northeast about 175 miles and including the Vesteraaelen islands to the north. The largest are Andoen, Langoen, Hindoen (the largest 860 square miles), East and West Vaagen and Flagstadöe. They have bold, precipitous, rugged and deeply indented coasts, the channels between which are deep, narrow and tortuous, and an elevated, sterile interior, several containing mountains which, though not lofty, are covered with perpetual snow. The highest peak is Higrafstind (3,811 feet). Immense shoals of cod and herring frequent their shores, and extensive and valuable fisheries are carried on. The principal cod-fishery beginning January-February ends in April, but the herring-fishery continues, and furnishes an important branch of national revenue. In ordinary years about 4,000 boats, each manned by five hands, are employed. The celebrated whirlpool, the Maelstrom, is situated at the southwest extremity of these islands. Permanent population of group, about 40,000.


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Rh various ways by the Muslim commentators. Some suppose them to be part of the revelation itself, and to conceal sublime and inscrutable mysteries; others think that they stand for the names of Allâh, Gabriel, Mohammed, and so on.

Nöldeke has the ingenious theory that they were monograms of the names of the persons from whom Zâid and his companions obtained the portions to which they are prefixed; thus, ALR would stand for Ez-zubâir, ALMR for Al-Mughâirah, TH for Tal‘ah, and so on. A comparison of the Arabic letters themselves with the names suggested makes the hypothesis a very probable one. They may have been mere numerical or alphabetical labels for the boxes of scraps on which the original was written; the authors of the Commentary known as El Jelâlâin, however, give the prevailing opinion amongst Muslim scholars when they say, ‘God alone knows what He means by these letters.’

The Surahs are subdivided into ′âyât, ‘verses’ (literally ‘signs’), which, although they for the most part mark a distinct pause either in the rhyme or sense, are sometimes mere arbitrary divisions irrespective of either.

Besides these, the Qur′ân is divided into sixty equal portions, called a‘hzâb (sing. ‘hizb), each subdivided into four equal parts; another division is that into thirty ′agzâ′ (sing. guz′) or ‘sections,’ so that the whole may be read through during the month of Ramadhân: these are again subdivided into rukû′h (sing. rak′hah), ‘acts of bowing.’ By these, rather than by chapter and verse (Sûrah and ′Âyah), the Muslims themselves quote the Book.

Besides the name Qur′ân it is known as El Furqân, ‘the Discrimination,’ El Mus‘haf , ‘the Volume,’ El Kitâb , ‘the Book,’ and Eikr , ‘the Reminder.’ The title attached to each Sûrah is taken from some striking word which occurs in it.

The creed of Mohammed and the Qur′ân is termed Islâm, ‘Resignation,’ scil. to the will of God. The religion, as understood and practised, is based upon four rules or fundamental principles: [6]


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loftie, William John

LOFTIE, William John, Irish-Anglican clergyman, writer on antiquities: b. Tandragee, County Armagh, 25 July 1839; d. 16 June 1911. He was educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and after holding church appointments joined the staff of the Saturday Review, and in 1894 that of the National Observer. As a writer on antiquarian subjects he combined learning and picturesque statement. He published ‘Round About London’ (1877; 4th ed., 1880); ‘Plea for Art in the House’ (1877); ‘Memorials of the Savoy’ (1879); ‘A Ride in Egypt’ (1879); ‘A History of London’ (1883); ‘Authorized Guide to the Tower of London’

(1886); ‘London’ (1887); ‘Windsor’ (1887); ‘Westminster Abbey’ (1890); ‘The Cathedral Churches of England’ (1892); ‘Inigo Jones and Wren’ (1893); ‘Inns of Court and Chancery’ (1894); ‘London Afternoons’ (1901); ‘Coronation Book of Edward VII’; ‘Colour of London’ (1907).


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ⅼⅹⅵ
 * 1) The Qur′ân itself.
 * 2) ‘Hadî (pl. ′a‘hâdî), the ‘traditional’ sayings of the prophet which supplement the Qur′ân, and provide for cases of law or ceremonial observance on which it is silent. They also deal with the life of Mohammed and the circumstances attending the revelations, and are therefore of great use in the exegesis of the Book itself. Although the Muslim authorities have been very strict in the canons laid down for the reception or rejection of these traditions, tracing them from hand to hand up to their original sources, a great deal of uncertainty exists as to the authenticity of many of them. The laws embodied in the traditions are called the Sunnah.
 * 3) Igmâ′h or the ‘consensus’ of opinion of the highest authorities in the Muslim church upon points concerning which neither the Qur′ân nor the 'Hadî are explicit.
 * 4) Qiyâs or ‘Analogy,’ that is, the reasoning of the theological authorities by analogy from the Qur′ân, ‘Hadî, and Igmâ′h, where anything in any one or more is still left undecided.

The first principle of the Muslim faith is a belief in Allâh, who, as we have seen, was known to the Arabs before Mohammed′s time, and under the title Allâh ta′hâlâ, ‘Allâh the most high,’ was regarded as the chief god of their pantheon. The epithet ta′hâlâ is, properly speaking, a verb meaning ‘be He exalted,’ but is used, as verbs sometimes are in Arabic, as an epithet. The name Allâh, ‘God,’ is composed of the article al, ‘the,’ and ilâh, ‘a god,’ and is a very old Semitic word, being connected with the el and elohîm of the Hebrew, and entering into the composition of a large proportion of proper names in Hebrew, Nabathean, and Arabic.

According to Muslim theology, Allâh is eternal and everlasting, one and indivisible, not endued with form, nor circumscribed by limit or measure; comprehending all things, but comprehended of nothing.


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The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Loftus, Augustus William Frederick Spencer

LOFTUS, Augustus William Frederick Spencer, English diplomatist: b. 4 Oct. 1817; d. 9 March 1904. He entered the diplomatic service in 1837 as attaché at Berlin and was likewise attaché at Stuttgart in 1844. He was secretary to Stratford Canning in 1848, and after serving as secretary of legation at Stuttgart (1852), and Berlin (1853), was envoy at Vienna (1858), Berlin (1860) and Munich (1862); became Ambassador at Berlin 1865, to the North German Confederation (1868-71) and to Saint Petersburg (1871-79). He was governor of New South Wales (1879-85). He published his Reminiscences (1892-94).


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Chapman, George (1559?-1634)


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214 inertia and ignorance until the Centennial pulled them out of it: all the same, I can see how fine an achievement it was, and how successful in jerking Philadelphians from their comfortable rut of indifference to everything going on outside of Philadelphia, or to whether there was an outside for things to go on in.

I know that I was conscious of the jerk in my little corner of the rut. The Centennial, for one thing, gave me my first object lesson in patriotism. There was no special training for the patriot when I was young—no school drilling, with flags, to national music. An American was an American, not a Russian Jew, a Slovak, or a Pole, and patriotism was supposed to follow as a matter of course. It did, but I fancy with many, as with me, after a passive, unintelligent sort of fashion. I knew about the Declaration of Independence, but had anybody asked for my opinion of it, I doubtless should have dismissed it as a dull page in a dull history book, a difficult passage to get by heart. But I could not go on thinking of it in that way when so remote an occasion as its hundredth birthday was sending Philadelphia off its head in this mad carnival of excitement. In little, as in big, matters I was constantly brought up against the fact that things did not exist simply because they were, but because something had been. An old time-worn story that amused the Philadelphian in its day is of the American from another town, who, after listening to much Philadelphia talk, interrupted to ask: "But what is a Biddle?" I am afraid I should