With respect to the Koran, the Orientals are at this day in the position into which, as respects our Holy Scriptures, an attempt was made to bring our forefathers in the days of mediæval scholasticism. They believe that in their sacred volume is contained all knowledge, either explicitly or implicitly. We have long abandoned definitively this idea. We have come to understand that the New Testament announces itself only as a moral revelation; and of that gives only the spirit, and not the letter; that is to say, that it does not profess to give, and, as a matter of fact, does not contain, a definite system of law, but the principles only which should regulate such a system. It leaves us, therefore, to go not only for our astronomy to astronomers, and for our geology to geologists, but also for our municipal law to jurists and legislators, so long as what they propound and enact is not at discord with Christian principles. The Mahomedan, however, has not this liberty, for the Koran professes to contain an all-embracing and sufficient code. It regulates everything. This is very unfortunate; or, whatever it was at first, it has, in process of time, come to be very unfortunate; for it makes the ideas—what we must regard as the ignorance rather than the knowledge—of a more than half-savage Arab of the seventh century the rule by which everything in law, life, and thought is to be measured for all time.

While I was in the East I was full of commiseration for the people I saw bound hand and foot in this way. They are handsome, clean-limbed fellows, and quick-witted enough. There is in them the making of great nations. Power, however, is an attribute of mind, and mind cannot work unless it be free. While I commiserated them, I saw no hope for them. The evil they are afflicted by appears not to admit of a remedy; because while, for men who have advanced so far as they have, it is intellectual suicide to be faithful to such a religion, to be unfaithful to it has hitherto proved to be moral suicide.

Their ideas and sentiments on all the ordinary concerns and events of life, and, in short, on all subjects, are the same in all, all being drawn from the same source. So also are even their very modes of expression. There is a prescribed form for everything that occurs; of course, not drawn, in every instance, first-hand from the Koran, but, at all events, ultimately from it, for these expressions are what have come to be adopted by the people universally, as being most in harmony with the spirit and ideas of the Book. The words to be used at meetings and at partings, under all circumstances; the words in which unbecoming acts and sentiments are to be corrected and acknowledged; the words, in short, which are appropriate to every occasion of life, are all prescribed, and laid up in the memory, ready for use. God’s name is rarely omitted in these formulæ, reference being made sometimes to one of His attributes, sometimes to another, as the occasion may require. Sometimes a pious sentiment is to be expressed; sometimes a pious ejaculation will be the correct thing. But everybody knows what is to be said on every occurrence, great or small, of life.

Learning the Koran by heart is education. It is for this that schools are established. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are de luxe, or for certain occupations only. History and science, of course, have no existence to their minds.

They treat the material volume itself, which contains the sacred words, with corresponding respect. For instance, when carrying it they will not allow it to descend below the girdle. They will not place it on the ground, or on a low shelf. They will not, when unclean, touch it. They will not print it for fear of there being something unclean in the ink, the paper, or the printer. They will not sell it to any unbelievers, even to such partial unbelievers as Jews or Christians. And in many other ways, indeed in every way in their power, they endeavour to show how sacred in their eyes is the Book.

In principle and effect it makes no great difference whether the letter of the Sacred Text be exclusively adhered to, or whether it be supplemented by more or less of tradition, and of the interpretations and decisions of certain learned and pious Doctors of the Law. The latter case, as far as the view we are now taking of the action of the system is concerned, would be equivalent only to the addition of a few more chapters to the Sacred Text. The existing generation would equally be barred from doing anything for itself. If the laws of Alfred, or of Edward the Confessor, had been preserved and accepted by ourselves as a heaven-sent code, incapable of addition or improvement; or if the laws of either had been received, with an enlargement of certain traditions, interpretations, and decisions—we should, in either case, equally have lost the practice and the idea of legislating for ourselves: that is to say, we should have lost the invigorating and improving process of incessantly discussing, adapting, and endeavouring to perfect our polity and our code: so that what is now with us the self-acting and highest discipline of the intellect, and of the moral faculty, would have been transformed into the constant and most effectual discipline for their enfeeblement and extinction.