of
thought, and, having embraced Islam, he saw no necessity for further
argument concerning it. The language of the Koran and the traditions was
a science sealed to him; and the reasoning intelligence of the Arab
whose dominion he had invaded was a constant reproof to him. He dared
not venture his barbarian dignity in the war of wit which occupied the
schools; and so fortified his unintelligence behind a rampart of
dogmatic faith. Impotent to develop law himself, he clutched blindly at
that which he found written to his hand. The code of Abu Hanifeh seemed
to him a perfect thing, and he made it the resting place of his legal
reason. Then, as he gradually possessed himself of all authority, he
declared further learning profane, and virtually closed the schools. His
military triumphs in the sixteenth century sealed the intellectual fate
of Islam, and from that day to our own no light of discussion has
illumined Moslem thought, in any of the old centres of her intelligence.
Reason, the eye of her faith in early times, has been fast shut--by
many, it has been argued, blind.

It is only in the present generation, and in the face of those dangers
and misfortunes to which Islam finds herself exposed, that recourse has
once more been had to intellectual methods; and it is precisely in those
regions of Islam where Arab thought is strongest that we now find the
surest symptoms of returning mental life. Modern Arabia, wherever she
has come in contact with what we call the civilization of the world, has
shown herself ready and able to look it in the face; and she is now
setting herself seriously to solve the problem of her own position and
that of her creed towards it.

In North Africa, indeed, civilization for the moment presents itself to
her only as an enemy; but where her intelligence has remained unclouded
by the sense of political wrong she has proved herself capable, not only
of understanding the better thought of Europe, but of sympathizing with
it as akin to her own. Thus at Cairo, now that the influence of
Constantinople has been partially removed, we find the Arabian Ulema
rapidly assimilating to their own the higher principles of our European
thought, and engrafting on their lax moral practice some of the better
features of our morality. It is at no sacrifice of imagined dignity, as
with the Turks, that Egypt is seeking a legal means for universal
religious toleration, or from any pressure but that of their own
intel