This condition of disentanglement from the things of sense is only held to be perfect when it springs from right dispositions. For there are, as a matter of fact, persons who profess to live in retirement and to fast without possessing right dispositions; such are sorcerers, Christians, and others who practise ascetic exercises. We may illustrate this by the image of a well-polished mirror. According as its surface is convex or concave, the object reflected in it is distorted from its real shape; if, on the contrary, the mirror has a plane surface, the object is reflected exactly as it is. Now, what a plane surface is for the mirror, a right disposition is for the soul, as regards the impressions it receives from without.
APPENDIX III
CHRISTIAN ELEMENTS IN MOHAMMEDAN LITERATURE
The almost miraculous renaissance in Islam which is now proceeding in Turkey and other Mohammedan countries reminds one forcibly of Dante's lines:
For I have seen The thorn frown rudely all the winter long, And after bear the rose upon its top. Paradiso, xiii. 133.
It is not perhaps fanciful to conjecture that one of the hidden causes of this renaissance is the large quantity of Christian truth which Islam literature holds, so to speak, in solution. It is a well-known fact that the Koran has borrowed largely from the Old Testament and the Apocryphal Gospels, but it is not so generally known that Mohammedan philosophers, theologians, and poets betray an acquaintance with facts and incidents of the Gospels of which the Koran contains no mention.
Leaving the Koran on one side, in the "Traditions," i.e., sayings of Mohammed handed down by tradition, we find God represented as saying at the Judgment, "O ye sons of men, I was hungry and ye gave Me no food," the whole of the passage in Matt. xxv. being quoted. This is remarkable, as it strikes directly at the orthodox Mohammedan conception of God as an impassible despot. Other sayings attributed to God which have a Christian ring are, "I was a hidden Treasure and desired to be known, therefore I created the world"; "If it were not for Thee, I would not have made the world" (addressed to Mohammed), evidently an echo of Col. I. 17, "All things have been created through Him and unto Him" (R.V.). The writer has often heard this last saying quoted by Indian Mohammedans in controversy.
Another traditional saying attributed to Mohammed is not unlike the doctrine of the Holy Spirit: "Verily from your Lord come breathings. Be ye prepared for them." The Second Advent is also referred to in others: "How will it be with you when God sends Jesus to judge you?" "There is no Mahdi but Jesus." It is a well-known fact that a certain gate in Jerusalem is kept walled up because the Mohammedans believe that Jesus will pass through it when He returns.