eat whenever one may wish is excess and two meals a day are more than
enough. The portion set apart for one may also suffice for two. Ideas
of this kind are of constant recurrence in the Muhammedan traditions:
indispensable needs alone are to be satisfied, as indeed Thomas
Aquinas teaches. Similar observations apply to dress: "he who walks in
costly garments to be seen of men is not seen of the Lord." Gold and
silver ornaments, and garments of purple and silk are forbidden by
both religions. Princes live as simply as beggars and possess only one
garment, so that they are unable to appear in public when it is being
washed: they live upon a handful of dates and are careful to save
paper and artificial light. Such incidents are common in the oldest
records of the first Caliphs. These princes did not, of course, live
in such beggary, and the fact is correspondingly important that after
the lapse of one or two generations the Muhammedan historians should
describe their heroes as possessing only the typical garment of the
Christian saint. This one fact speaks volumes.

Every action was performed in God or with reference to God--an
oft-repeated idea in either religion. There is a continual hatred of
the world and a continual fear that it may imperil a man's soul. Hence
the sense of vast responsibility felt by the officials, a sense which
finds expression even in the ordinary official correspondence of the
authorities which papyri have preserved for us. The phraseology is
often stereotyped, but as such, expresses a special theory of life.
This responsibility is represented as weighing with especial severity
upon a pious Caliph. Upon election to the throne he accepts office
with great reluctance protesting his unworthiness with tears. The West
can relate similar stories of Gregory the Great and of Justinian.

Exhortations are frequent ever to remember the fact of death and to