In North Africa, indeed, civilization for the moment presents itself to
her only as an enemy; but where her intelligence has remained unclouded
by the sense of political wrong she has proved herself capable, not only
of understanding the better thought of Europe, but of sympathizing with
it as akin to her own. Thus at Cairo, now that the influence of
Constantinople has been partially removed, we find the Arabian Ulema
rapidly assimilating to their own the higher principles of our European
thought, and engrafting on their lax moral practice some of the better
features of our morality. It is at no sacrifice of imagined dignity, as
with the Turks, that Egypt is seeking a legal means for universal
religious toleration, or from any pressure but that of their own
intelligence that her chief people are beginning to reform their
domestic life, and even, in some instances, to adopt the practice of
monogamy. The truth would seem to be that the same process is being
effected to-day in their minds as was formerly the case with their
ancestors. In the eighth century, the Arabs, brought into contact with
Greek philosophy, assimilated it by a natural process of their reasoning
into the body of their own beliefs; and now in the nineteenth they are
assimilating a foreign morality into their own system of morals.
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