little conviction in Arabia.”  “The party of true Mussulmans had all their strength in Omar; but after his assassination, that is to say, twelve years after the death of the prophet, the opposite party triumphed by the election of Othman.”  “The first generation of the Hegira was completely occupied in exterminating the primitive Mussulmans, the true fathers of Islamism.”  Perhaps it is bold to question the opinions of a Semitic scholar of the force of M. Renan, but it seems to us that he goes too far in supposing that such a movement as that of Islam could be started without a tremendous depth of conviction.  At all events, supported by such writers as Weil, Sprenger, and Muir, we will say that it was a powerful religious movement founded on sincerest conviction, but gradually turned aside, and used for worldly purposes and temporal triumphs.  And, in thus diverting it from divine objects to purely human ones, Mohammed himself led the way.  He adds another, and perhaps the greatest, illustration to the long list of noble souls whose natures have become subdued to that which they worked in; who have sought high ends by low means; who, talking of the noblest truths, descend into the meanest prevarications, and so throw a doubt on all sincerity, faith, and honor.  Such was the judgment of a great thinker—­Goethe—­concerning Mohammed.  He believes him to have been at first profoundly sincere, but he says of him that afterward “what in his character is earthly increases and develops itself; the divine retires and is obscured:  his doctrine becomes a means rather than an end.  All kinds of practices are employed, nor are horrors wanting.”  Goethe intended to write a drama upon Mohammed, to illustrate the sad fact that every man who attempts to realize a great idea comes in contact with the lower world, must place himself on its level in order to influence it, and thus often compromises his higher aims, and at last forfeits them[395].  Such a man, in modern times, was Lord Bacon in the political world; such a man, among conquerors, was Cromwell; and among Christian sects how often do we see the young enthusiast and saint end as the ambitious self-seeker and Jesuit!  Then we call him a hypocrite, because he continues to use the familiar language of the time when his heart was true and simple, though indulging himself in luxury and sin.  It is curious, when we are all so inconsistent, that we should find it so hard to understand inconsistency.  We, all of us, often say what is right and do what is wrong; but are we deliberate hypocrites?  No! we know that we are weak; we admit that we are inconsistent; we say amen to the “video meliora, proboque,—­deteriora sequor,” but we also know that we are not deliberate and intentional hypocrites.  Let us use the same large judgment in speaking of the faults of Cromwell, Bacon, and Mohammed.