Descriptions  the  most  minutely  detailed,  and  at  the
same  time  the  most  vivid,  are  mingled  with  powerful
appeals  to  those  sensual  passions  by  which  the  ima-
gination in  all  countries,  but  especially  in  those  in
which  Mahometanism  has  taken  root,  is  most  forcibly
influenced.  In  no  other  religion  that  prohibits  idols
is  the  strain  upon  the  imagination  so  slight.1

1  Some  curious  instances  of  the  way  in  which  the  early  fanaticism
of  Mahometanism  was  thus  sustained,  have  been  collected  by
Helvetius,  De  VEsprit.  It  is  quite  true,  as  Sale  contends,  that
Mahomet  did  not  introduce  polygamy,  and  therefore  that  the  fact  of
his  permitting  it  could  not  have  been  one  of  the  motives  urging


246  KATIONALISM    IN   EUROPE.
