s more than probable.

A similar attitude was also assumed by either religion towards the
facts of economic life. In either case the religious point of view is
characteristic. The reaction against the tendency to condemn secular
life is certainly stronger in Islam, but is also apparent in
Christianity. Thomas Aquinas directly stigmatises trade as a
disgraceful means of gain, because the exchange of wares does not
necessitate labour or the satisfaction of necessary wants: Muhammedan
tradition says, "The pious merchant is a pioneer on the road of God."
"The first to enter Paradise is the honourable merchant." Here the
solution given to the problem differs in either case, but in Christian
practice, opposition was also obvious. Common to both religions is the
condemnation of the exaction of interest and monetary speculation,
which the middle ages regarded as usury. Islam, as usual, gives this
Christian idea the form of a saying enounced by Muhammed: "He who
speculates in grain for forty days, grinds and bakes it and gives it
to the poor, makes an offering unacceptable to God." "He who raises
prices to Muslims (by speculation) will be cast head downwards by God
into the hottest fire of hell." Many similar traditions fulminate
against usury in the widest sense of the word. These prohibitions were
circumvented in practice by deed of gift and exchange, but none the
less the free development of commercial enterprise was hampered by
these fetters which modern civilisation first broke. Enterprise was
thus confined to agriculture under these circumstances both for
Christianity and Islam, and economic life in either case became
"mediaeval" in outward appearance.

Methods of making profit without a proportional expenditure of labour
were the particular objects of this aversion. Manual labour was highly
esteemed both in the East and West. A man's first duty was to support
himself by the work of his own hands, a duty proclaimed, as we know,
from the apostolic age onwards. So far as Islam is concerned, this
view may be illustrated by the following utterances: "The best of
deeds is the gain of that which is lawful": "the best gain is made by
sale within lawful limits and by manual labour." "The most precious
gain is that made by manual labour; that which a man thus earns and
gives to himself, his people, his sons and his servants, is as
meritorious as alms." Thus practical work is made incumbent upon the
believer, and the extent to whi