critic of Islamism of the type of Carlyle, Christendom has produced a hundred critics, like Sale, determined beforehand to find fault with it and to discredit it.

This movement is proceeding apace. Under the pressure of the modern formulas of life, Islamdom in its entirety is bound to come within its scope. The Senussi community may offer a refuge to Islamism in its original form, but only for a time. Like Communism, original Islamism might have had a chance of enduring-a temporary chance, since human nature must rebel sooner or later against all artificial limitations imposed upon its basic instincts-only if the entire world was subjected to its rule. A few countries remaining free or having escaped from such a régime as the theocratic, all the others must follow suit if they would survive. Failing this, they must become the prey of the emancipated nations, which will infallibly yield to the temptation of using the superior force accompanying the higher material progress ensured by elastic forms of existence, to subdue them.

By formally repudiating the theocratic principle of government and constituting herself into a 'lay' republic, which was virtually equivalent to the repudiation of the Sheria't, Turkey has cast a seed into the intellectual soil of Islamdom the full fructification of which, in the shape of the consummation of the revolution under consideration and its formal consecration, is a question of a few years.

In spite, or rather on account, of the excisions to which the Law of the Prophet will have been subjected, Islamism is intended to survive and flourish. The active principle of this vitality is to be found in the code of Islamic ethics. These cannot, and must not, perish. They constitute an incalculably precious inheritance not only of Islamdom, but of the world at large. Do they not provide a rule of action which represents a very high and yet perfectly attainable ideal, the spread of which is the means of saving an ever increasing number of human beings from moral and physical degradation in regions where other religious interventions are of little or no avail ?

The great, the incomparable, merit of Islamic ethics is, first, that their conception of preparation for the next world does not exclude the notion of happiness in the shape of material welfare in the present world, where, however evanescent individual life may be, the species is meant to endure, and, secondly, that the measure of righteousness they demand of man does not exceed his normal capacity of accomplishment. The Ten Commandments are as much Mussulman as they are Judaic or Christian. Not so, however, the injunctions of the Sermon on the Mount. The latter are rejected because they are normally impracticable and as such injurious rather than beneficent in their operation. The fact is

that pressure exercised on the individual in a sense that runs counter to human nature only provokes a reaction in the opposite direction.

To be more explicit. Islamic ethics do not aim at raising humanity above itself. Taking it as it is, as God Himself has created it, they make full allowance for the basic tendencies which prevail in its midst and which have their roots in egotism. Instead of seeking to suppress these tendencies, which may succeed in the case of an infinitesimal minority of abnormally constituted individuals, freaks of nature, born with a vocation for selfsacrifice, but which must fail in the case of the overwhelming majority, they strive to moderate and regulate them.

In practice, the dominant note in Islamic ethics is precisely this sense of moderation and of equipoise. Thus, to take two instances in that part of the code which governs the relations between man and man. Charity is exalted as the highest virtue, but it is prescribed in a measure that does not produce the sensation of privation. Self-restraint is recommended in dealing with offence, but in spirit and not in action, by which is meant that the individual must not allow vindictiveness to take possession of him, but content himself with retaliation in the exact measure of the offence, retaliation being necessary in the interests of the offender and the community. Surely it will not be invidious to claim that this conception of personal ethics is much more rational and more serviceable to humanity than that which enjoins on man to share his possessions with his poor neighbour, down to his last and only cloak, and to offer his left cheek to the smiter of the right?

Again, as regards the general orientation to be given by man to his existence, Islamic ethics deny the necessity for renunciation and self-abnegation, which constitute the essence of Christian teaching. But when they proclaim the legitimacy of that form of happiness residing in the enjoyment of the good things of this life, and even urge man to strive after them, they take care to guard against excessive self-indulgence. The ideal they set up of material well-being is the aurea mediocritas sung by the Roman poet, the pursuit of which does not imply violent competition leading to strife, and the possession of which does not produce satiety and demoralisation. As a result, there is much greater harmony between doctrine and practice in Islamdom than in the Christian world. In the latter the automatic, irresistible, and therefore evidently preordained, progress of civilisation which is a standing challenge to the authority of the Christian doctrine has led to a development of the natural tendency of man to seek satisfaction in self-indulgence which has assumed the character and proportions of an all-devouring passion, a passion more

marked precisely in those parts of Christendom which were subjected at one time or another to the tyrannical restraints of puritanism. This is certainly more than a coincidence, and bears out the statement made before that when violence is offered to human nature in the moral domain she will fly off at a tangent.

The comparative ease of becoming a good Mussulman, which means becoming a thoroughly good man, and the ensuing condition of peace, serenity and dignity which develops in the individual, procuring him a profound feeling of internal satisfaction, explain the extraordinary hold this creed has on its adherents. Again, the principal secret of the prodigious success of this creed in Asia and Africa is to be found in this facility, as also in its power to make a living reality of the principles of fraternity and equality, irrespective of race and colour, principles which have remained a dead letter outside its fold.

Yes, divorced from its theocratic complexion and apparatus and representing no longer a system of state, but reduced to its wonderful ethics and sublimely simple dogmas, whereby it will become a religion pure and simple, Islamism is meant to survive indefinitely for the greater good of Islamdom and humanity at large. May not even the hope be expressed that, having lost its aggressive spirit and become an instrument of progress, a reconciliation will take place between it and Christianity? Islamdom is ready for the embrace. The obstacle resides in the persistence of the spirit of the Crusades in the Christian world, as was demonstrated in connection with the Great War and Turkey's defeat, which were the occasion for such an orgy of anti-Islamic activity.

The initiative rests with England and the United States. The former is the greatest Mussulman Power as regards composition, more than a hundred million of the Faithful living under her rule. She would derive tremendous advantages from a ChristianMussulman rapprochement operated under her auspices. The United States is at the head of the movement for the establishment of universal and enduring peace. May she be promptly induced to realise what a supremely important factor such a rapprochement will be in the accomplishment of the transcendental task she has imposed upon herself. In any case grandeur et noblesse obligent.

As a concluding remark, it is interesting to note that the revolution in course of accomplishment in Islamism owes its origin and development to nationalism. Nationalism it is which has brought Islamdom into conflict with the idea of the predominance of the religious authority in the State, and which, substituting itself for a form of sectarianism impregnated with withered beliefs and the spirit of stagnant immobility, has allowed Turkey, Egypt and Persia-Afghanistan following closely upon their heels. -to adopt the modern conceptions of progress, in the absence of

which the attainment of that ideal of independence which the East has embraced with such enthusiasm and determination is impossible. So far from connoting a blind and aggressive Chauvinism, as the professional opponents of Eastern emancipation would have the world believe, nationalism in Asia and Africa, where it has become the outstanding characteristic of the historic communities peopling these continents, is a healthy and vigorous source of inspiration, which has shown the East the road to salvation. It would be a great mistake, however, to imagine that its principle, as exhibited in its conflict with Islamism, is antagonistic to religion. On the contrary, it aims at the consolidation of the spiritual influences through the suppression of the worn-out forms in which they operated in the past.

A. RUSTEM BEY.

INDIVIDUALISM AND THE SOCIAL
CONSCIENCE

INDIVIDUALISM as a political creed or philosophy seems at present to be relegated to the limbo of supposed Victorian fallacies. Its shallower and noisier supporters, only half understanding its foundations and its implications, as is the way with shallow and noisy supporters of all good causes, gave it a bad name; and, like any other dog with a bad name, the public is ready to hang it from the nearest lamp-post whenever it shows its nose round the corner of the street.

Nevertheless Individualism is the only sound foundation upon which a political system can be built.

On the other hand, it is equally true that no political community can flourish without a robust and healthy social conscience to keep Individualism on the right track, which of necessity in a community must be the community track.

Let us first consider the meaning of Individualism and then of social conscience. Afterwards we can decide the part that each should play in the life of the individual and of the State and can study the interaction between the two.

Individualism in the political sense is the employment of the individual's powers and energy within and in relation to the community, not by coming to the community and saying, 'How do you wish to employ me?' but by the individual seeking to employ himself in some way that he deems to be of benefit to the community and for the most part also of advantage to himself. One says of benefit to the community because obviously there are modes of employing individual energy which are anti-social and have no relation to any political system whatever. The thief and all those who, like the worse kind of money-lender, merely prey upon society and intend to prey upon society, even though a number of them may wear silk hats, are not examples of Individualism in the political sense. The Individualist in the political

sense is the man who desires his work to be of benefit to the community, but desires the greatest possible scope for each to strike out his own line of employment with as little interference as may be from the community.