Thomas Carlyle in his series of lectures given in May of 1840 under the title Heroes and Heroes Worship on Islam and the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him).
A silent great soul; he (Prophet Muhammad-peace
be upon him) was one of those who cannot but
be in earnest; whom Nature herself has appointed to be sincere. While
others walk in formulas and hearsays, contented enough to dwell there, this man
could not screen himself in formulas; he was alone with his own soul and the
reality of things. The great Mystery of Existence, as I said, glared in upon
him, with its terrors, with its splendors; no hearsays could hide that
unspeakable fact, “Here am I!” Such sincerity,
as we named it, has in very truth something of divine. The word of such a man
is a Voice direct from Nature’s own Heart. Men do and must listen to that as to
nothing else; —all else is wind in comparison. From of old, a thousand
thoughts, in his pilgrimages and wanderings, had been in this man: What am I?
What is this unfathomable Thing
I live in, which men name Universe? What is Life; what is Death?
What am I to believe? What am I to
do?... That by the unspeakable special favor of Heaven he had now found it all
out; was in doubt and darkness no longer, but saw it all. That all these Idols
and Formulas were nothing, miserable bits of wood; that there was One God in
and over all; and we must leave all Idols, and look to Him.
That God is great; and that there is nothing else great! He is the Reality. Wooden Idols are not real; He is real. He made us at first, sustains us yet; we and all things are but the shadow of Him; a transitory garment veiling the Eternal Splendour. “Allah Hu Akbar, God is great;”—and then also “Islam,” That we must submit to God. That our whole strength lies in resigned submission to Him, whatsoever He does to us. For this world, and for the other! The thing He sends to us, was it death and worse than death, shall be good, shall be best; we resign ourselves to God. —” If this is Islam,” says Goethe, “do we, not all live in Islam?” Yes, all of us that have any moral life; all live so. It has ever been held the highest wisdom for a man not merely to submit to Necessity, —Necessity will make him submit, —but to know and believe well that the stern thing which Necessity had ordered was the wisest, the best, the thing wanted there. To cease his frantic pretension of scanning this great God’s-World in his small fraction of a brain; to know that it had verily, though deep beyond his soundings, a Just Law, that the soul of it was Good; — that his part in it was to conform to the Law of the Whole, and in devout silence follow that; not questioning it, obeying it as unquestionable. I say this is yet the only true morality known. A man is right and invincible, virtuous and on the road towards sure conquest, precisely while he joins himself to the great deep Law of the World, in spite of all superficial laws, temporary appearances, profit-and-loss calculations; he is victorious while he co-operates with that great central Law, not victorious otherwise: —and surely his first chance of co-operating with it, or getting into the course of it, is to know with his whole soul that it is; that it is good, and alone good! This is the soul of Islam. Islam means in its way Denial of Self, Annihilation of Self. This is yet the highest Wisdom that Heaven has revealed to our Earth. Such light had come, as it could, to illuminate the darkness of this wild Arab soul. A confused dazzling splendor as of life and Heaven, in the great darkness which threatened to be death: he called it a revelation and the angel Gabriel; —who of us yet can know what to call it? It is the “inspiration of the Almighty” that giveth us understanding. To know; to get into the truth of anything, is ever a mystic act, —of which the best Logics can but babble on the surface. “Is not Belief the true god-announcing Miracle?” says Novalis. —That Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) whole soul, set in flame with this grand Truth vouchsafed him, should feel as if it were important and the only important thing, was very natural.
