as professor, exhibited under the most
painful operations. They uttered hardly a sound when operated upon in
the most sensitive nerve-centres. The negro, notoriously excitable as he
is, and therefore still more exposed to complete prostration of the
organs of feeling, exhibits this apathy in a yet more marked degree than
the Arab and Egyptian. Many examples of this are found in old Arabic
authors--_e.g._, in the narratives of the martyrdoms of Hatyt, of Hellaj
and of a young Mameluke crucified in 1247 A.D. Of the last Suyuti has
preserved a psychologically detailed description.

Although Christian martyrology is rich in such instances of unshakable
fortitude under the most painful tortures, yet in Islam the ecstatic
temper has attained a higher significance and been more constantly
exhibited. A chief reason of this was the religious fanaticism, which
was incomparably stronger and more widely diffused in Islam than in
mediaeval Christendom. The minds of the Moslems were kept in perpetual
tension by severe religious exercises, the effect of which was
intensified by fasts and pilgrimages. The peculiar manner of life in the
desert, the birthplace of Islam, also contributed to this; the scanty
diet, the loneliness of the desert, and in the towns the want of civic
life, the poverty of ideas among the Arabs, all helped to produce the
same result. Finally, deception, hypocrisy, and superstition, as, alas,
so often is the case in religious matters, played a great part. Whoever
did not feel ecstatically moved at the recitation of the Koran pretended
to be so, and often thereby, perhaps unconsciously, exercised a great
effect on others. Men began by pretending to feel religious enthusiasm
and ended by believing that they really felt it. Ghazzali mentions in
the Ihya ul-ulum that the prophet commanded that whoever did not feel
moved to tears at the recitation of the Koran should pretend to weep
and to be deeply moved; for, adds Ghazzali sagely, in these matters one
begins by forcing oneself to do what afterwards comes spontaneously.
Moreover, the fact that religious excitement was looked upon as the mark
of a fervent mind and devout intensity, vastly increased the number of
those who claimed mystic illumination.

When verses of the Koran through frequent repetition lost their power to
awaken ecstasy, single lines of fragments of poems sufficed to produce
it. Once the mystic Taury found himself in the midst of a company who
were di