"His belief in Mahomet, in the Koran, and in the sufficiency of the Koran, came to him probably in spontaneous rushes of emotion; there may have been little vestiges of argument floating here and there, but they did not justify the strength of the emotion, still less did they create it, and they hardly even excused it."
— Bagehot, William (1826-1877)
Author
Work Title
Date
April, 1871
Metaphor
"His belief in Mahomet, in the Koran, and in the sufficiency of the Koran, came to him probably in spontaneous rushes of emotion; there may have been little vestiges of argument floating here and there, but they did not justify the strength of the emotion, still less did they create it, and they hardly even excused it."
Metaphor in Context
But take the case of the Caliph Omar, according to Gibbon's description of him. He burnt the Alexandrine Library, saying: "All books which contain what is not in the Koran are dangerous; all those which contain what is in the Koran are useless". Probably no one ever had an intenser belief in anything than Omar had in this. Yet it is impossible to imagine it preceded by an argument. His belief in Mahomet, in the Koran, and in the sufficiency of the Koran, came to him probably in spontaneous rushes of emotion; there may have been little vestiges of argument floating here and there, but they did not justify the strength of the emotion, still less did they create it, and they hardly even excused it.
Categories
Provenance
Reading
Citation
William Bagehot, "On the Emotion of Conviction," from The Contemporary Review vol. 17 (1871): 32-40. <Link to Google Books>
Text from The Liberty Fund
Text from The Liberty Fund
Date of Entry
01/23/2018
