The eventual triumph of the new religion
is in every case and at every time nothing more than a compromise: nor
can more be expected, inasmuch as the religious instinct, though one
of the most important influences in man, is not the sole determining
influence upon his nature.
Recognition of this fact can only be obtained at the price of a breach
with ecclesiastical mode of thought. Premonitions of some such breach
are apparent in modern Muhammedanism: for ourselves, they are
accomplished facts. If I correctly interpret the signs of the times, a
retrograde movement in religious development has now begun. The
religion inspiring a single personality, has secured domination over
the whole of life: family, society, and state have bowed beneath its
power. Then the reaction begins: slowly religion loses its
comprehensive force and as its history is learned, even at the price
of sorrow, it slowly recedes within the true limits of its operation,
the individual, the personality, in which it is naturally rooted.
CONCLUSION AND BIBLIOGRAPHY
The purpose of the present work has been to show not so much the
identity of Christian and Muhammedan theories of life during the
middle ages, as the parallel course of development common to both, and
to demonstrate the fact that ideas could be transferred from one
system to the other. Detail has been sacrificed to this general
purpose. The brief outline of Muhammedan dogmatics and mysticism was
necessary to complete the general survey of the question.
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