'Erthe out of Erthe is wondirli wrouȝt,
Erthe of Erth had gete a dignite of nouȝt,
Erthe upon Erthe had sett all his thouȝt
How that Erthe upon Erthe may be his brouȝt': etc.
"The 'Camel-rider,' suggests Ossian, 'yet a few years and the blast of the desert comes.' The dromedary was chosen as Death's vehicle by the Arabs, probably because it bears the Bedouin's corpse to the distant burial-ground, where he will lie among his kith and kin. The end of this section reminds us of—
'How poor, how rich, how abject, how august,
How complicate, how wonderful is Man!'
"The Hâjî now passes to the results of his long and anxious thoughts: I have purposely twisted his exordium into an echo of Milton—
'Till old experience doth attain
To something of prophetic strain.'
"He boldly declares that there is no God as man has created his Creator. Here he is at one with modern thought:—'En général les croyants font le Dieu comme ils sont eux-mêmes' (says J. J. Rousseau, 'Confessions,' I. 6): 'les bons le font bon: les méchants le font méchant: les dévots haineux et bilieux, ne voient que l'enfer, parce qu'ils voudraient damner tout le monde; les âmes aimantes et douces n'y croient guère; et l'un des étonnements dont je ne reviens pas est de voir le bon Fénélon en parler dans son Télémaque comme s'il y croyoit tout de bon: mais j'espère qu'il mentoit alors; car enfin quelque véridique qu'on soit, il faut bien mentir quelquefois quand on est évêque.' 'Man depicts himself in his gods,' says Schiller. Hence the Naturgott, the deity of all ancient peoples, and with which every system began, allowed and approved of actions distinctly immoral, often diabolical. Belief became moralized only when the conscience of the community, and with it of the individual items, began aspiring to its golden age,—Perfection. 'Dieu est le superlatif, dont le positif est l'homme,' says Carl Vogt; meaning, that the popular idea of a numen is that of a magnified and non-natural man.
"He then quotes his authorities. Buddha, whom the Catholic Church converted to Saint Josaphat, refused to recognize Ishwara (the deity), on account of the mystery of the 'cruelty of things.' Schopenhauer, Miss Cobbe's model pessimist, who at the humblest distance represents Buddha in the world of Western thought, found the vision of man's unhappiness, irrespective of his actions, so overpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be malevolent, 'heartless, cowardly, and arrogant.' Confucius, the 'Throneless king, more powerful than all kings,' denied a personal deity. The Epicurean idea rules the China of the present day. 'God is great, but He lives too far off,' say the Turanian Santâls in Aryan India; and this is the general language of man in the Turanian East.
"Hâjî Abdû evidently holds that idolatry begins with a personal deity. And let us note that the latter is deliberately denied by the 'Thirty-nine Articles.' With them God is 'a Being without Parts (personality) or Passions.' He professes a vague Agnosticism, and attributes popular faith to the fact that Timor fecit Deos; 'every religion being, without exception, the child of fear and ignorance' (Carl Vogt). He now speaks as the 'Drawer of the Wine,' the 'Ancient Taverner,' the 'Old Magus,' the 'Patron of the Mughân or Magians;' all titles applied to the Soofi as opposed to the Zâhid. His 'idols' are the eidola (illusions) of Bacon, 'having their foundations in the very constitution of man,' and therefore appropriately called fabulæ. That 'Nature's Common Course' is subject to various interpretation, may be easily proved. Aristotle was as great a subverter as Alexander; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite of the Dark Ages, who ruled the world till the end of the thirteenth century, became the 'twice execrable' of Martin Luther and was finally abolished by Galileo and Newton. Here I have excised two stanzas. The first is—
'Theories for truths, fable for fact, system for science, vex the thought.
Life's one great lesson you despise—to know that all we know is nought.'