collectively under Christian influence during the early period of
Muhammedanism. Conditions very similar in general, affected those
conceptions which we explain upon scientific grounds but which were
invariably regarded by ancient and mediaeval thought as supernatural,
conceptions deduced from the phenomena of illness and dreams. Islam
was no less opposed than Christianity to the practice of magic in any
form, but only so far as these practices seemed to preserve remnants
of heathen beliefs. Such beliefs were, however, continued in both
religions in modified form. There is no doubt that ideas of high
antiquity, doubtless of Babylonian origin, can be traced as
contributing to the formation of these beliefs, while scientific
medicine is connected with the earlier discoveries of Greece. Common
to both religions was the belief in the reality of dreams, especially
when these seemed to harmonise with religious ideas: dreams were
regarded as revelations from God or from his apostles or from the
pious dead. The fact that man could dream and that he could appear to
other men in dreams after his death was regarded as a sign of divine
favour and the biographies of the saints often contain chapters
devoted to this faculty. These are natural ideas which lie in the
national consciousness of any people, but owe their development in the
case of Islam to Christian influence. The same may be said of the
belief that the prayers of particular saints were of special efficacy,
and of attempts by prayer, forms of worship and the like to procure
rain, avert plague and so forth: such ideas are common throughout the
middle ages. Thus in every department we meet with that particular
type of Christian theory which existed in the East during the seventh
and eighth centuries.

This mediaeval theory of life was subjected, as is well known, to many
compromises in the West, and was materially modified by Teutonic