conquest was a triumph of brute force, and nothing further."

And M. Renan, a person well qualified to judge of the character of this
religion by the most extensive and impartial studies, gives this
verdict:[400]--

"Islamism, following as it did on ground that was none of the best,
has, on the whole, done as much harm as good to the human race. It has
stifled everything by its dry and desolating simplicity."

Again:--

"At the present time, the essential condition of a diffused
civilization is the destruction of the peculiarly Semitic element, the
destruction of the theocratic power of Islamism, consequently the
destruction of Islamism itself."[401]

Again:--

"Islamism is evidently the product of an inferior, and, so to speak, of
a meagre combination of human elements. For this reason its conquests
have all been on the average plane of human nature. The savage races
have been incapable of rising to it, and, on the other hand, it has not
satisfied people who carried in themselves the seed of a stronger
civilization."[402]

Note to the Chapter on Mohammed.

We give in this note further extracts from Mr. Palgrave's description of
the doctrine of Islam.

"This keystone, this master thought, this parent idea, of which all the
rest is but the necessary and inevitable deduction, is contained in the
phrase far oftener repeated than understood, 'La Ilah illa Allah,' 'There
is no God but God.' A literal translation, but much too narrow for the
Arab formula, and quite inadequate to render its true force in an Arab
mouth or mind.

"'There is no God but God' are words simply tantamount in English to the
negation of any deity save one alone; and thus much they certainly mean in
Arabic, but they imply much more also. Their full sense is, not only to
deny absolutely and unreservedly all plurality, whether of nature or of
person, in the Supreme Being, not only to establish the unity of the
Unbegetting and Unbegot, in all its simple and uncommunicable Oneness, but
besides this the words, in Arabic and among Arabs, imply that this one
Supreme Being is also the only Agent, the only Force, the only Act
existing throughout the universe, and leave to all beings else, matter or
spirit, instinct or intelligence, physical or moral, nothing but pure,
unconditional passiveness, alike in movement or in quiescence, in action
or in capacity. The sole power, the sole motor, movement, energ