intoxication. The evil world said that the impossibility to accomplish this
heavenly union often induced those people to imitate it for the time being
with the earthly means of wine and the indulgence in sensual love.

Characteristic of all these sorts of mysticism is their esoteric pride.
All those emotions are meant only for a small number of chosen ones. Even
Ghazâlî's ethical mysticism is not for the multitude. The development of
Islâm as a whole, from the Hijrah on, has always been greater in breadth
than in depth; and, consequently, its pedagogics have remained defective.
Even some of the noblest minds in Islâm restrict true religious life to an
aristocracy, and accept the ignorance of the multitude as an irremediable
evil.

Throughout the centuries pantheistic and animistic forms of mysticism have
found many adherents among the Mohammedans; but the infallible Agreement
has persisted in calling that heresy. Ethical mysticism, since Ghazâlî, has
been fully recognized; and, with law and dogma, it forms the sacred trio of
sciences of Islâm, to the study of which the Arabic humanistic arts
serve as preparatory instruments. All other sciences, however useful and
necessary, are of this world and have no value for the world to come. The
unfaithful appreciate and study them as well as do the Mohammedans; but,
on Mohammedan soil they must be coloured with a Mohammedan hue, and their
results may never clash with the three religious sciences. Physics,
astronomy, and philosophy have often found it difficult to observe this
restriction, and therefore they used to be at least slightly suspected in
pious circles.

Mysticism did not only owe to Ijmâ' its place in the sacred trio, but it
succeeded, better than dogmatics, in confirming its right with words of
Allah and His Prophet. In Islâm mysticism and allegory are allied in the