A literary history of Persia

DOCTRINE OF THE MU'TAZILA 287of the Divine Unit}'. To remove from God all idea of injustice,they recognised man's entire freedom of action. They taught that allthe truths necessary for salvation belong to the domain of reason,and that they may be acquired solely by the light of reason, no lessbefore than after Revelation, in such wise that man, at all times andin all places, ought to possess these truths. But to these primarypropositions the different sects added others peculiar to themselves.Most of them have treated theology with much profundity ; others,on the contrary, became involved in hair-splittings, or even divergedwidely from the spirit of Islam. Some there were, for example,who believed in Metempsychosis, and who imagined that theanimals of each species form a community which has as a prophetan animal like unto themselves ;strange to say they based this lastdoctrine on two verses of the Qur'an. And there were many otherfollies of the same kind. But it would be unjust to render all theMu'tazihtes responsible for the errors of some, and, when all is saidand done, they deserve to be spoken of with respect. In meditatingon what religion bade them believe, they became the rationalists ofIslam. Thus it came about that one of their principal affirmationswas that the Qur'an was really created, although the Prophet had'asserted the contrary. Were the Qur'an uncrcate,' they said, ' itwould be necessary to admit the existence of two Eternal Beings.'From the moment when the Qur'an, or Word of God, was held asto the immu-something created, it could no longer, having regardtability of the Deity, be considered as belonging to His essence.Thereby the whole dogma of revelation was little by little seriouslyshaken, and many Mu'tazilites frankly declared that it was notimpossible to write something as good as, or even better than, theQur'an. They therefore protested against the dogma of the divineorigin of the Qur'an and against Inspiration. The idea which theyentertained of God was purer and more exalted than that of theorthodox. They would not listen to any corporeal conception ofthe Divinity. Mahomet had said,'One day ye shall see your Lordas you saw the full moon at the Battle of Badr,' and these words,which the orthodox took literally, were for them an ever newstumbling-block. They therefore explained them away by sayingthat man, after his death, would know God by the eyes of the spirit,that is to say, by the reason. They equally refused to countenancethe pretension that God created the1unbeliever, and showed them-1Meaning, of course, that every man was created a potential believer,and that the unbelievers only became so by their own frowardness, not byGod's will.