to its logical consequences must overthrow positive religion. By
incorporating this dangerous tendency within itself, Islam has averted
the peril which it threatens. Creed is no longer endangered, and this
purpose being secured, thought is free.

Union with God is gained by ecstasy and leads to enthusiasm. These
terms will therefore show us in what quarter we must seek the
strongest impulses to mysticism. The concepts, if not the actual
terms, are to be found in Islam: they were undoubtedly transmitted by
Christianity and undergo the wide extension which results in the
dervish and fakir developments. _Dervish_ and _fakir_ are the Persian
and Arabic words for "beggar": the word _sufi_, a man in a woollen
shirt, is also used in the same sense. The terms show that asceticism
is a fundamental element in mysticism; asceticism was itself an
importation to Islam. Dervishes are divided into different classes or
orders, according to the methods by which they severally prefer to
attain ecstasy: dancing and recitation are practised by the dancing
and howling dervishes and other methods are in vogue. It is an
institution very different from monasticism but the result of a course
of development undoubtedly similar to that which produced the monk:
dervishism and monasticism are independent developments of the same
original idea.

Among these Muhammedan companies attempts to reach the point of
ecstasy have developed to a rigid discipline of the soul; the believer
must subject himself to his master, resigning all power of will, and
so gradually reaches higher stages of knowledge until he is eventually
led to the consciousness of his absolute identity with God. It seems
to me beyond question that this method is reflected in the _exercitiis
spiritualibus_ of Ignatius Loyola, the chief instrument by which the