p a mystical idea he takes
it as he takes the man or the palm-tree; that is, quite literally.
When he does distinguish somebody not as a man but as a Moslem,
then he divides the Moslem from the non-Moslem exactly as he divides
the man from the camel. But even then he recognises the equality of men
in the sense of the equality of Moslems. He does not, for instance,
complicate his conscience with any sham science about races.
In this he has something like an intellectual advantage over
the Jew, who is generally so much his intellectual superior;
and even in some ways his spiritual superior. The Jew has far more
moral imagination and sympathy with the subtler ideals of the soul.
For instance, it is said that many Jews disbelieve in a future life;
but if they did believe in a future life, it would be something
more worthy of the genius of Isaiah and Spinoza. The Moslem Paradise
is a very Earthly Paradise. But with all their fine apprehensions,
the Jews suffer from one heavy calamity; that of being a Chosen Race.
It is the vice of any patriotism or religion depending on race
that the individual is himself the thing to be worshipped;
the individual is his own ideal, and even his own idol.
This fancy was fatal to the Germans; it is fatal to the Anglo-Saxons,
whenever any of them forswear the glorious name of Englishmen
and Americans to fall into that forlorn description.
This is not so when the nation is felt as a noble abstraction,
of which the individual is proud in the abstract.
A Frenchman is proud of France, and therefore may think himself
unworthy of France. But a German is proud of being a German;
and he cannot be too unworthy to be a German when he is a German.
In short, mere family pride flatters every member of the family;
it produced the arrogance of the Germans, and it is capable of producing
a much subtler kind of arrogance in the Jews. From this particular
sort of self-deception the more savage man of the desert is free.
If he is not considering somebody as a Moslem, he will consider
him as a man. At the price of something like barbarism, he has
at least been saved from ethnology.

But here again the obvious is a limit as well as a light to him.
It does not permit, for instance, anything fine or subtle in
the sentiment of sex. Islam asserts admirably the equality of men;
but it is the equality of males. No one can deny that a noble
dignity is possible even to the poorest, who has seen the Arabs
comin