Most men
are easily comprehensible as the products of these factors. The more
independent of all such influences, or the more in opposition to them,
a personality develops, the more attractive and interesting will it
appear to us. At the first glance it looks as if the Emperor Akbar had
developed his entire character from himself and by his own efforts in
total independence of all influences which in other cases are thought
to determine the character and nature of a man. A Mohammedan, a
Mongol, a descendant of the monster Timur, the son of a weak incapable
father, born in exile, called when but a lad to the government of a
disintegrated and almost annihilated realm in the India of the
sixteenth century,--which means in an age of perfidy, treachery,
avarice, and self-seeking,--Akbar appears before us as a noble man,
susceptible to all grand and beautiful impressions, conscientious,
unprejudiced, and energetic, who knew how to bring peace and order out
of the confusion of the times, who throughout his reign desired the
furtherance of his subjects' and not of his own interest, who while
increasing the privileges of the Mohammedans, not only also declared
equality of rights for the Hindus but even actualized that equality,
who in every conceivable way sought to conciliate his subjects so
widely at variance with each other in race, customs, and religion, and
who finally when the narrow dogmas of his religion no longer satisfied
him, attained to a purified faith in God, which was independent of all
formulated religions.
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