Pity for weakness he can understand; and the Moslem is quite capable of giving royal alms to a cripple or an orphan.

But reverence for weakness is to him simply meaningless.
It is a mystical idea that is to him no more than a mystery.
But the same is true touching what may be called the lighter side of the more civilised sentiment.

This hard and literal view of life gives no place for that slight element of a magnanimous sort of play-acting, which has run through all our tales of true lovers in the West.
Wherever there is chivalry there is courtesy; and wherever there is courtesy there is comedy.

There is no comedy in the desert.
Another quite logical and consistent element, in the very logical and consistent creed we call Mahometanism, is the element that we call Vandalism.

Since such few and obvious things alone are vital, and since a half-artistic half-antiquarian affection is not one of these things, and cannot be called obvious, it is largely left out.