Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/158

142 is the decided victory of Europe, it is the accomplishment of the old Shemitic saying: “God shall enlarge Japheth, and he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan shall be his servant.”

Until that period, Shemitism was master on its own ground. The Mussulman East surpassed the West, had better armies, and a better policy, and supplied the latter with wealth, learning, and civilization. Now their respective parts are changed. European genius has been developing itself with incomparable grandeur; Islamism, on the contrary, has been as slowly crumbling away; in our times it is falling with a crash. In the present day, the one essential condition for the expansion of European civilization is the destruction of the principle of Shemitic action (chose)—the destruction of the theocratic power of Islamism, and consequently the destruction of Islamism itself; for Islamism can only exist as an official religion: reduce it to the position of