idealizes the
devotion itself. To adequately realize the merits of the idol gets to
be considered the one great merit of the worshiper; and the sacrifices
and servilities by which savage tribesmen have from time immemorial
exhibited their faithfulness to chieftains are now outbid in favor of
the deity. Vocabularies are exhausted and languages altered in the
attempt to praise him enough; death is looked on as gain if it attract
his grateful notice; and the personal attitude of being his devotee
becomes what one might almost call a new and exalted kind of
professional specialty within the tribe.[199] The legends that gather
round the lives of holy persons are fruits of this impulse to celebrate
and glorify. The Buddha[200] and Mohammed[201] and their companions
and many Christian saints are incrusted with a heavy jewelry of
anecdotes which are meant to be honorific, but are simply abgeschmackt
and silly, and form a touching expression of man's misguided propensity
to praise.

[199] Christian saints have had their specialties of devotion, Saint
Francis to Christ's wounds; Saint Anthony of Padua to Christ's
childhood; Saint Bernard to his humanity; Saint Teresa to Saint Joseph,
etc. The Shi-ite Mohammedans venerate Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law,
instead of Abu-bekr, his brother-in-law. Vambery describes a dervish
whom he met in Persia, "who had solemnly vowed, thirty years before,
that he would never employ his organs of speech otherwise but in
uttering, everlastingly, the name of his favorite, Ali, Ali. He thus
wished to signify to the world that he was the most devoted partisan of
that Ali who had been dead a thousand years. In his own home, speaking
with his wife, children, and friends, no other word but 'Ali!' ever
passed his lips. If he wanted food or drink or anything else, he
expressed his wants still by repeating 'Ali!' Begging or buying at the
bazaar, it was always 'Ali!' Treated ill or generously, he would still
harp on his monotonous 'Ali!' Latterly his zeal assumed such
tremendous proportions that, like a madman, he would race, the whole
day, up and down the streets of the town, throwing his stick high up
into the air, and shriek our, all the while, at the top of his voice,
'Ali!' This dervish was venerated by everybody as a saint, and
received everywhere with the greatest distinction." Arminius Vambery,
his Life and Adventures, written by Himself, London, 1889, p. 69. On
the anniversary of the d