as performs the ceremonies connected with circumcision; the
office was filled and the title borne by Mahomet, hence it sometimes
signifies head of the faith, and is so applied to the Sultan of Turkey;
good Mohammedans believe in the future advent of an Imam--the hidden
Imam--who shall be greater than the Prophet himself.

IMAUS, a name the ancients gave to any large mountain chain in Asia,
more particularly one bordering on India, or looking down upon it, as the
home of the Aryans.

IMITATION OF CHRIST, a book of pious reflections, unique in its
kind, and much esteemed by piously thoughtful people; ascribed to
THOMAS A KEMPIS (q. v.).

IMMACULATE CONCEPTION, the doctrine held by the Roman Catholic
Church that the Virgin Mary was conceived and born without taint of sin;
first distinctly propounded in the 12th century, at which time a festival
was introduced in celebration of it, and which became matter of dispute
in the 14th century, and it was only in 1854 that it became by a bull an
article of the Catholic faith.

IMMANENCE, the idea that the creative intelligence which made, with
the regulative intelligence which governs, the universe, is inherent in
it and pervades it.

IMMENSITIES, CENTRE OF, an expression of Carlyle's to signify that
wherever any one is, he is in touch with the whole universe of being, and
is, if he knew it, as near the heart of it there as anywhere else he can
be.

IMMENSITY, THE TEMPLE OF, the universe as felt to be in every corner
of it a temple consecrated to worship in with wonder and awe.

IMMERMANN, KARL LEBERECHT, German novelist and dramatist, born at
Magdeburg; fought at Waterloo; entered the public service of Prussia and
obtained an appointment at Duesseldorf, where he died; his fame rests upon
his miscellaneous tales and satirical novels, such as "Muenchausen"; his
dramas consisted of both tragedies and comedies (1796-1840).

IMMORTALITY, the doctrine of the continued existence of the soul of
each individual after death, a doctrine the belief of which is, in one
form or another, common to most religious systems; even to those which
contemplate absorption in the Deity as the final goal of existence, as is
evident from the prevalence in them of the doctrine of transmigration or
reincarnation.

IMMORTALS, a regiment of 10,000 foot soldiers who formed the
bodyguard of the ancient Persian kings; the name given to the 40 members
of the French Academy.

IMOGEN,