THE KORAN.
An quicquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipiatur.—LEMMA.
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.