[114] It may be argued that the really swift triumph of Islam in a later age goes to support Professor Smith’s thesis. But the triumph of Islam was primarily military. And Islam too kept its cortège of “demons.” [↑]
[115] E.g. in modern China. [↑]
Chapter V
ORGANIZATION AND ECONOMICS
§ 1. The Economic Side
It is important to realize in some detail the operation of the economic factor in particular, and of organization in general, before we try to grasp synthetically the total process of documentary and doctrinal construction. The former is somewhat sedulously ignored in ordinary historiography, by reason of a general unwillingness even among rationalists to seem to connect mercenary motives with religious beginnings; and of the general assumption among religionists that “true” or “early” religion operates in spite of, in defiance or in independence of and not by aid of, economic motives. No one will dispute that the history of the Roman Catholic Church is one of economic as well as doctrinal action and reaction, or that Protestantism from the first was in large measure an economic processus. But it is commonly assumed, at least implicitly, that “primitive” religion, religion “in the making,” is not at all an affair of economic motive or reaction.
Those who have at all closely studied primitive religious life know that this is not so.[1] The savage medicine-man is up to his lights as keenly concerned about his economic interest as were the priests of ancient Babylon and Egypt—to take instances that can hardly give modern offence.[2] And to say this is not to say that the “religion” involved is insincere, in the case of the savage or the pagan any more than in that of the modern ecclesiastic or missionary. It is merely to say that religion has always its economic side, and that faith may go with economic self-seeking as easily as with self-sacrifice. I at least am not prepared to say that when the Franciscans in general passed from the state of voluntary poverty to that of corporate wealth they ceased to be sincere believers; or that a bishop is necessarily less pious than a Local Preacher.
I have seen, in Egypt, the life of a Moslem “saint” in the making. He fasted much, certainly never eating more than one meal a day, and he was visibly emaciated and feeble as a result of his abstinences. Over his devout neighbours he had an immense influence. To his religious addresses they listened with rapt reverence; and when once in my presence he gave to a young man a religious charm to cure his sick sister, in the shape of a cigarette paper inscribed with a text from the Koran and rolled up to be swallowed, the youth’s face was transfigured with joyous faith, his eyes shining as if he had seen a glorious vision. I have not seen more radiant faith, in or out of “Israel.” And the saint, all the same, took unconcealed satisfaction in showing privately the heavy purse of gold he had recently collected from his faithful. To call him insincere would be puerile. I believe him to have been as sincere as Luther or Loyola. He simply happened, like so many Easterns and Westerns, to combine the love of pelf with the love of God.