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Theological Essays and Other Papers v1

T >> Thomas de Quincey >> Theological Essays and Other Papers v1




Such, we are to understand, was not the Mahometan system; such had
been the system of Rome. 'Socially and politically,' proceeds the
passage, 'the Saracen empire was little better than the Gothic,
Hunnish, and Avar monarchies; and that it proved more durable,
with almost equal oppression, is to be attributed to the powerful
enthusiasm of Mahomet's religion, which tempered for some time its
avarice and tyranny.' The same sentiment is repeated still more
emphatically at p. 468--' The political policy of the Saracens was
of itself utterly barbarous; and it only caught a passing gleam of
justice from the religious feeling of their prophet's doctrines.'

Thus far, therefore, it appears that Mahometanism is not much
indebted to its too famous founder; it owes to him a principle,
viz. the unity of God, which, merely through a capital blunder,
it fancies peculiar to itself. Nothing but the grossest ignorance
in Mahomet, nothing but the grossest non-acquaintance with Greek
authors on the part of the Arabs, could have created or sustained
the delusion current amongst that illiterate people--that it was
themselves only who rejected Polytheism. Had but one amongst the
personal enemies of Mahomet been acquainted with Greek, _there_
was an end of the new religion in the first moon of its existence.
Once open the eyes of the Arabs to the fact, that Christians
had anticipated them in this great truth of the divine unity, and
Mahometanism could only have ranked as a subdivision of Christianity.
Mahomet would have ranked only as a Christian heresiarch or
schismatic; such as Nestorius or Marcian at one time, such as Arius
or Pelagius at another. In his character of _theologian_,
therefore, Mahomet was simply the most memorable of blunderers,
supported in his blunders by the most unlettered of nations. In
his other character of _legislator_, we have seen that already
the earliest stages of Mahometan experience exposed decisively his
ruinous imbecility. Where a rude tribe offered no resistance to
his system, for the simple reason that their barbarism suggested
no motive for resistance, it could be no honor to prevail. And
where, on the other hand, a higher civilization had furnished
strong points of repulsion to his system, it appears plainly that
this pretended apostle of social improvements had devised or hinted
no readier mode of conciliation than by putting to the sword all
dissentients. He starts as a theological reformer, with a fancied
defiance to the world which was no defiance at all, being exactly
what Christians had believed for six centuries, and Jews for
six-and-twenty. He starts as a political reformer, with a fancied
conciliation to the world, which was no conciliation at all, but
was sure to provoke imperishable hostility wheresoever it had any
effect at all.

We have thus reviewed some of the more splendid aspects connected
with Mr. Finlay's theme; but that theme, in its entire compass,
is worthy of a far more extended investigation than our own limits
will allow, or than the historical curiosity of the world (misdirected
here as in so many other cases) has hitherto demanded. The Greek
race, suffering a long occultation under the blaze of the Roman
empire, into which for a time it had been absorbed, but again
emerging from this blaze, and reassuming a distinct Greek agency and
influence, offers a subject great by its own inherent attractions,
and separately interesting by the unaccountable neglect which it
has suffered. To have overlooked this subject, is one amongst the
capital oversights of Gibbon. To have rescued it from utter oblivion,
and to have traced an outline for its better illumination, is the
peculiar merit of Mr. Finlay. His greatest fault is--to have been
careless or slovenly in the niceties of classical and philological
precision. His greatest praise, and a very great one indeed, is--to
have thrown the light of an original philosophic sagacity upon a
neglected province of history, indispensable to the arrondissement
of Pagan archaeology.

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