distance represents Buddha in the world of Western thought, found
the vision of man's unhappiness, irrespective of his actions, so
overpowering that he concluded the Supreme Will to be malevolent,
"heartless, cowardly, and arrogant." Confucius, the "Throneless
king, more powerful than all kings," denied a personal deity. The
Epicurean idea rules the China of the present day. "God is great,
but he lives too far off," say the Turanian Santals in Aryan
India; and this is the general language of man in the Turanian
East.

Haji Abdu evidently holds that idolatry begins with a personal
deity. And let us note that the latter is deliberately denied by
the "Thirty-nine Articles." With them God is "a Being without
Parts (personality) or Passions." He professes a vague
Agnosticism, and attributes popular faith to the fact that Timor
fecit Deos; "every religion being, without exception, the child
of fear and ignorance" (Carl Vogt). He now speaks as the "Drawer
of the Wine," the "Ancient Taverner," the "Old Magus," the
"Patron of the Mughan or Magians"; all titles applied to the
Soofi as opposed to the Zahid. His "idols" are the eidola
(illusions) of Bacon, "having their foundations in the very
constitution of man," and therefore appropriately called
_fabulae_. That "Nature's Common Course" is subject to various
interpretation, may be easily proved. Aristotle was as great a
subverter as Alexander; but the quasi-prophetical Stagyrite of
the Dark Ages, who ruled the world till the end of the thirteenth
century, became the "twice execrable" of Martin Luther; and was
finally abolished by Galileo and Newton. Here I have excised two
stanzas. The first is:--