I have continually considered, as I have read my history, the special points in which their influence is to be observed in the development of Europe.  It takes the form of the great heresies; the denial of the importance of matter (sometimes of its existence); the denial that anything but matter exists; the denial of the family; the denial of ownership; the over-simplicity which is peculiarly a Desert product runs through all such follies, as does the rejection of a central and governing power upon earth, which is again just such a rebellion as the Desert would bring.  I say the great heresies are the main signs of that influence; but it is in small and particular matters that you may see its effect most clearly.

For instance, the men of the Desert are afraid of wine.  They have good reason; if you drink wine in the Desert you die.  In the Desert, a man can drink only water; and, when he gets it, it is like diamonds to him, or, better still, it is like rejuvenation.  All our long European legends which denounce and bring a curse upon the men who are the enemies of wine, are legends inspired by our hatred of the thing which is not Europe, and that bounds Europe, and is the enemy of Europe.

So also with their attachment to numbers.  For instance, the seventh day must have about it something awful and oppressive; the fast must be seven times seven days, and so forth.  We Europeans have always smiled in our hearts at these things.  We would take this day or that, and make up a scheme of great and natural complexity, full of interlacing seasons; and nearly all our special days were days of rejoicing.  We carried images about our fields further to develop and enhance the nature of our religion; we dedicated trees and caves; and the feasts of one place were not the feasts of another.  But to the men of the Desert mere unfruitful number was a god.

Then again, the word, especially the written word, the document, overshadows their mind.  It has always had for them a power of something mysterious.  To engrave characters was to cast a spell; and when they seek for some infallible authority upon earth, they can only discover it in the written characters traced in a sacred book.  All their expression of worship is wrought through symbols.  With us, the symbol is clearly retained separate from that for which it stands, though hallowed by that for which it stands.  With them the symbol is the whole object of affection.

On this account you will find in the men of the Desert a curious panic in the presence of statues, which is even more severe than the panic they suffer in the presence of wine.  It is as though they said to themselves:  “Take this away; if you leave it here I shall worship it.”  They are subject to possession.

Side by side with this fear of the graphic representation of men or of animals, you will find in them an incapacity to represent them well.  The art of the iconoclasts is either childish, weak, or, at its strongest, evil.