The Environment That Moulded Mohammed (Peace be upon him) (2/3)

Speaking for myself, who have passed many days of my existence at sea, and many more still in the desert, there is that in the latter which always reminds me of the former. To be sure, the ever restless sea with its almost myriad moods—its calm, its motion, its rippling smiles, its wavy undulations, its heights and depths, its fickleness and treachery, its dazzling beauties, its fierce turbulence—is as unlike the desert, with its grim stiff grandeur and appalling sameness as it well could be: still—

“Tho’ inland far we be,

Our souls have sight of that immortal sea

Which brought us thither.”

There is no music in it by day or by night, only the dead still hush of silence. Yet the desert has its aspects, if it has not its moods and contrasts—as singular as they are striking. See, or rather feel it under the fierce and scorching glare of the fiery sun, that almost shrivels you into a mummy; see it also under the softer spell of the silvery orb, when the air is balmy, if not fresh, and you will at once imagine yourself to be in an altogether different and enchanted world. Then again, lose yourself in the desert on a dark night when for once in a way the stars are dim or obscured by clouds, and you will realize as you never before have done, the awesome reality of the sense of loneliness—a feeling which can only be compared to that felt by the hunted criminal hiding in a city, and against whom every man’s hand is raised.

But there is besides in the desert the fateful mirage that, like the ocean sirens, has lured so many to their doom. Finally there is the oasis which stands out of the sea of shimmering sand, like an island paradise that towers over the waste of seething waters which encircle it. The desert too, like the sea, has its ships and its men. Ships that pass by day as well as by night. Ships that stride across the great sandy wastes, grunting and gawky, with unwearying patience, unyielding tenacity, and unerring instinct. As are the ships, so are the men. But in place of gawkiness and grunts, the golden virtue of silence, and the conscious pride of natural dignity. Men who in their very port and carriage are the very spirit and personification of the desert. Men who represent not the genii, but the genius of the great dry sea of sand and silence. Indeed, if ever men on this planet of ours were patriarchal, if ever men bore themselves with the gait and the simple dignity of free men, the Bedawins of Arabia and the North African deserts do. With the lynx-like, yet enigmatic expression that calls to mind a combination of eagle keenness and owl-like solemnity, there is about them a freedom of manner and bearing, a dignity of carriage, an independence of character, that are the peculiarly glorious and distinctive heirlooms of the air, expanse and grandeur of these inland seas. In every sense, moral and physical, they are the products of an unrestricted environment that has made them what they are—wanderers on the face of the earth. But wanderers from choice. Untrammelled even to licence; giving an unbridled rein to their spirit of independence. Regarding with supreme contempt the luxuries and even necessaries of civilization. Yet with it all slaves to the spiritual fears that haunt them. Relics of a primitive and old-world civilization, there is about these Bedawins a flavour of antiquity, of a past that is hoary with the hoariness of eternal age, so distant that we cannot conjecture about it, even in the vaguest of terms. In addition to this everlasting antiquity and conservatism, there is about these patriarchs a naturally dignified reticence, and an air of calm, quiet assurance and authority, that are peculiarly their own personal property. But there is even more than this. There is that same universal concept—common to all primitive people who have not outlived it—of belief in the fear of a supreme power. That same awe and reverence for the patriarchal authority connected with that of the ancestors which has preceded it; that calm and philosophical acceptation of Karma or Fatalism; that same dread of consequences; that identical terror of malignant demons; that same shrinking from the inevitable, which is the heritage of all natural people. Inherent instincts that even twelve centuries of Islam have scarcely modified. When we get underneath the surface of human nature as represented by the Arab, whether he came from the east, the west, the south, or the centre, it is obvious that the underlying motive for most, if not all, of his social customs is inspired by that personal or religious instinct which is so closely allied to the primary instincts of all. Out of such fundamental material did Mohammed emerge!

Nevertheless, with all its drawbacks, there is about the desert, only in a different degree, the pleasure of the pathless woods, the rapture of the lonely shore. Just as by the deep and rolling sea whose very roar is music, there is a society where none intrudes, so with the desert. Right in the very core and centre of its silence and solitude, the man whose ears and eyes are open to receive impressions, finds himself in the presence of that invisible but omniscient power of Nature. The power that, while it causes the earnest thinker to pause and reflect, makes the average human being yearn for the companionship of his own kind. But it was not so with Mohammed. Mohammed was not as other men are. He was a thought leader. Not a deep thinker by any means; but profoundly in earnest. Few men in the world’s history—judging at least by results—have been more in earnest than he was. In Hannibal there is the same earnest fixity of purpose, only different in kind, the same unquenchable ardour, and the same iron will that kept him faithful to the sacred vow of undying vengeance against the Romans, that his father exacted from him on the altar of their ancestral gods. In William the Silent too, but also in another direction, we find the same relentless purpose and the same inflexible sincerity to attain the independence and autonomy of the United Provinces. Cromwell likewise gave his life and his services—all that was best in him in fact—in the firm and sincere conviction that he was God’s chosen instrument. But in none of these men, not even in the great and heroic Ironside, was there the same fervent godliness, i.e. the fear and veneration of God. It was Luther most of all who approached Mohammed in the sincerity of his purpose, i.e. of his religion. For although Luther was essentially a priest, and did not found a new creed, his sincerity showed itself as a Protestant and Reformer. In his whole life the fear and veneration of God as the motive factor of his existence was manifest.

It is, of course, just possible, as Tennyson surmises, that:

“... Through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of men are widen’d with the process of the suns.”

This, however, is vague and brings us no nearer to an exact comprehension of the matter. The better to understand this feeling of fear that so dominated men of the Numa, Buddha, Luther, John Knox, Cromwell and Mohammed type, it is essential that the student grasps and measures the actual measure of difference that divides religion from creed. It is but meet that we should accept the rational axiom, that religion is natural, and creed the egotistical and personal interpretation placed upon religion by human beings. As Draper says: “When natural causes suffice, it is needless to look for supernatural.” So Bacon, looking with the insight of true genius into the Book of Nature, up to Nature’s God, said in that immortal aphorism which opens the Novum Organum, “Homo Naturæ minister et interpres”—man is the servant and interpreter of Nature. This will make it easier to get at the root of this dual feeling of fear and veneration. But to do so it is necessary for the student to look as far back into the past as he can. In every ancient cult that has ever existed, in the Chaldæan, the Egyptian, the Aryan, the various (so-called Pagan) African, for example, the same overmastering element predominates. In Grecian annals and literature—in the Iliad, the Odyssey, Hesiod’s Theogony, in the great tragedies of Æschylus, in Plutarch and other writers—Fear is not merely reverenced as “Holy,” but in Greece, as elsewhere, altars were erected and worship offered to her as a goddess.

(Continued)