Many here
may have read Mr. Carlyle's vindication of Mohammed in his Lectures on
Hero Worship; to those who have not, I shall only say, that I entreat
them to do so; and that I assure them, that though I differ in many
things utterly from Mr. Carlyle's inferences and deductions in that
lecture, yet that I am convinced, from my own acquaintance with the
original facts and documents, that the picture there drawn of Mohammed
is a true and a just description of a much-calumniated man.
Now, what was the strength of Islam? The common answer is, fanaticism
and enthusiasm. To such answers I can only rejoin: Such terms must be
defined before they are used, and we must be told what fanaticism and
enthusiasm are. Till then I have no more e priori respect for a long
word ending in -ism or -asm than I have for one ending in -ation or -
ality. But while fanaticism and enthusiasm are being defined--a work
more difficult than is commonly fancied--we will go on to consider
another answer. We are told that the strength of Islam lay in the hope
of their sensuous Paradise and fear of their sensuous Gehenna. If so,
this is the first and last time in the world's history that the strength
of any large body of people--perhaps of any single man--lay in such a
hope.
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