llenism.
Dissensions persist even now because millions of people are unable to
distinguish pure religion from the forms of expression belonging to an
extinct civilisation. Islam went through a similar course of
development and assumed the spiritual panoply which was ready to hand.
Here, as elsewhere, this defence was a necessity during the period of
struggle, but became a crushing burden during the peace which followed
victory, for the reason that it was regarded as inseparable from the
wearer of it. From this point of view the analogy with Christianity
will appear extremely striking, but it is something more than an
analogy: the Oriental Hellenism of antiquity was to Christianity that
which the Christian Oriental Hellenism of a few centuries later was to
Islam.

We must now attempt to realise the nature of this event so important
in the history of the world. A nomadic people, recently united, not
devoid of culture, but with a very limited range of ideas, suddenly
gains supremacy over a wide and populous district with an ancient
civilisation. These nomads are as yet hardly conscious of their
political unity and the individualism of the several tribes composing
it is still a disruptive force: yet they can secure domination over
countries such as Egypt and Babylonia, with complex constitutional
systems, where climatic conditions, the nature of the soil and
centuries of work have combined to develop an intricate administrative
system, which newcomers could not be expected to understand, much less
to recreate or to remodel. Yet the theory has long been held that the
Arabs entirely reorganised the constitutions of these countries.
Excessive importance has been attached to the statements of Arab
authors, who naturally regarded Islam as the beginning of all things.
In every detail of practical life they regarded the prophet and his
contemporaries as their ruling ideal, and therefore naturally assumed
that the constitutional practices of the prophet were his own
invention. The organisation of the conquering race with its tribal
subordination was certainly purely Arab in origin. In fact the
conquerors seemed so unable to adapt themselves to the conditions with
which they met, that foreigners who joined their ranks were admitted
to the Muhammedan confederacy only as clients of the various Arab
tribes. This was, however, a mere question of outward form: the
internal organisation continued unchanged, as it was bound to continue
u