DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.63447#0110
94
THE HISTORICAL PAST OF ITALY.
has aptly described in his portrait of Haidee and Juan
the manners and feelings of the East:—
“ Love was born with them, in them, so intense,
It was their very being—not a sense.”
Over the minds and imaginations of these susceptible
races arose a great prophet, conqueror, and ruler, who
brought in a new creed, for which all yearned, uniting
the wild fancy, the domestic habits, and the brilliant
military glory which distinguished the epoch, under the
severity and solemnity of the purely monotheistic form
of divine worship.
With much in common with all Asiatic natives, the Maho-
medans were raised far above, and distinctly severed from
them, by an abhorrent contempt and rejection of idols.
When, like a piercing sword, the course of the con-
queror had cut indelibly into the heart of society, its
impress was deeply imbedded in it, through two funda-
mental instincts akin to man. On the one hand, vast
promises of dominion served to gratify the cravings
of earthly vanity and cupidity in the soldiers who fol-
lowed the footsteps of the prophet; and on the other,
an eternal paradise of sensuous delights was to be the
portion of the believer who fell in the good fight.
It is difficult to imagine a creed more fitted to satisfy
Eastern populations. The permission of indulgence of
feelings lingering in the human heart; the sanctifying
these by direct mission from on high; the effacing of
scruples that disquieted the conscience; the simplicity
of the domestic duties; the moral “directness” of the
laws regulating the intercourse between man and man;
the reverence for age; the injunctions for charity;
the toleration of odious and loathsome diseases in
the indigent; all these clear, practical duties inculcated
without evasion or ambiguity, and all enforced as the
direct commands of the Almighty, spoke at once to
millions, distracted between decaying polytheism, and
a multitude of contradictory and unintelligible semi-
Jewish sects, appealing most powerfully to the natural
and better sentiments of man. And no religion has yet
THE HISTORICAL PAST OF ITALY.
has aptly described in his portrait of Haidee and Juan
the manners and feelings of the East:—
“ Love was born with them, in them, so intense,
It was their very being—not a sense.”
Over the minds and imaginations of these susceptible
races arose a great prophet, conqueror, and ruler, who
brought in a new creed, for which all yearned, uniting
the wild fancy, the domestic habits, and the brilliant
military glory which distinguished the epoch, under the
severity and solemnity of the purely monotheistic form
of divine worship.
With much in common with all Asiatic natives, the Maho-
medans were raised far above, and distinctly severed from
them, by an abhorrent contempt and rejection of idols.
When, like a piercing sword, the course of the con-
queror had cut indelibly into the heart of society, its
impress was deeply imbedded in it, through two funda-
mental instincts akin to man. On the one hand, vast
promises of dominion served to gratify the cravings
of earthly vanity and cupidity in the soldiers who fol-
lowed the footsteps of the prophet; and on the other,
an eternal paradise of sensuous delights was to be the
portion of the believer who fell in the good fight.
It is difficult to imagine a creed more fitted to satisfy
Eastern populations. The permission of indulgence of
feelings lingering in the human heart; the sanctifying
these by direct mission from on high; the effacing of
scruples that disquieted the conscience; the simplicity
of the domestic duties; the moral “directness” of the
laws regulating the intercourse between man and man;
the reverence for age; the injunctions for charity;
the toleration of odious and loathsome diseases in
the indigent; all these clear, practical duties inculcated
without evasion or ambiguity, and all enforced as the
direct commands of the Almighty, spoke at once to
millions, distracted between decaying polytheism, and
a multitude of contradictory and unintelligible semi-
Jewish sects, appealing most powerfully to the natural
and better sentiments of man. And no religion has yet