ation and its ethical standards
were good. Like Mithraism its basis was Persian (its rise was
synchronous with the Sassanian revival of Mazdaism), but the two went
different ways: the former laid stress on mystical ceremonies, the
latter on moral and theological conceptions. The vogue that Manichaeism
enjoyed was due, apparently, to its eclectic character: adopting the
Persian dualism, it modified and expounded this by a Gnostic doctrine of
aeons, which was intended to harmonize the goodness of God and the
existence of evil, and it added the figure of the highest aeon, Christ,
the savior of men. On the other hand, its involved and fantastic
machinery led to its downfall.

+1116+. Two theocratic bodies that failed to reach the full church form
are _Islam_ and the _Peruvian cult of the sun_. The Islamic constitution
is based on a sacred book, its theology and its form of public worship
are borrowed from Christianity and Judaism, its private worship is
individualistic, and it offers paradise to the faithful. But Islam is in
essence a State religion rather than a church. Its populations belong to
it by descent; its head is the Calif (now the Sultan of Turkey). Its
diffusion, though due in certain cases to the superiority of its ideas
and the simplicity of its customs,[2049] has yet come largely (as in
Egypt, Syria and Palestine, Persia, and North Africa) from social and
political pressure--in some cases it has been adopted by whole nations
at a blow; Mohammed forced all the people of Arabia to accept it.
Individual choice recedes into the background, except (as in Judaism) in
the case of proselytes. Its conception of sin and salvation are largely
external. It bears a great resemblance to the Judaism of the Hasmonean
dynasty, a national cult with a priest-sovereign at its head.

Within Islam there have arisen organizations that imitate the form of a
church in certain respects; such were the Morabits (Almoravides) and the
Mohads (Almohades),[2050] whose bond of union was in part theological,
and such are the great fraternities in Africa and Asia, which are
devoted, among other things, to religious work, and have elaborate
organizations and ceremonies of reception.[2051] But these are all
largely political and military. The Ismalic movement (from ca. 900 A.D.
on), the central doctrine of which was the incarnation of God in certain
men and finally in the Mahdi, was not Islamic and not Semitic; with a
nominal acceptance of the