4     EARLY   DEVELOPMENT   OF   MOHAMMEDANISM

some  jurists  are  inclined  to  make  an  exception  in
favour  of  a  few  texts,  sufficient  to  give  the  inquirer
a  notion  of  its  contents ;  and  they  can  quote  the
precedent  of  the  Prophet,  who  in  his  imperious
message  to  all  peoples,  nations,  and  languages,  com-
manding them  to  adopt  Islam  if  they  wished  for
safety,  introduced  a  text  from  the  sacred  volume.
It  is  clear,  however,  that  the  same  objection  must
really  apply  to  one  text  as  to  a  number ;  it  would  be
impossible  to  fix  a  limit  at  which  the  volume  became
esoteric.  No,  let  people  pay  homage  to  it  first,
recognise  that  it  is  the  divine  revelation,  and  then
they  may,  or  indeed  must,  study  it.  But  such  recog-
nition can  only  be  extorted  by  force,  if  the  right  to
examine  is  denied.  And  if  methods  are  to  be  judged
by  their  results,  no  one  with  Mohammed's  experience
would  have  regarded  argument  as  an  expedient  for
conversion  comparable  with  the  sword.  He  argued
for  thirteen  years  and  made  converts  by  the  unit  or
the  decade  ;  he  drew  the  sword  and  won  them  by  the
hundred  and  the  thousand.  Twenty  years  of  fighting
effected  more  than  a  thousand  years  of  pleading  and
arguing  would  effect.  But  just  as  the  argument  of
reason  is  apt  to  be  weakened  if  the  sword  be  behind
it,  so  the  argument  of  the  sword  is  not  strengthened
by  the  fact  that  the  other  form  of  reasoning  has  been
tried  in  vain.  Hence  the  periods  of  inquiry  and
probation  are  not  desirable.
