Page:An Essay on the Age and Antiquity of the Book of Nabathaean Agriculture.djvu/159

Rh a religion, free and individual, and it will perish. Islamism is not a merely State religion, like Catholicism was in France under Louis XIV, and still is in Spain; it is a religion which excludes the State, an organization of which the Papal States offer the only type in Europe. War unceasing is there,—war which will only cease when the last son of Ismael shall have died with misery, or been driven by terror to the depths of the desert. Islamism is the perfect negative of Europe; Islamism is fanaticism, such as Spain in the time of Philip II., and Italy in the time of Pius V., scarcely knew. Islamism is contempt of science, suppression of civil society; it is the frightful weakness of the Shemitic spirit, narrowing the mind of man; closing it against every delicate conception, every fine feeling, every rational research, to place it immovably in front of one unceasing tautology: God is God.

The future, gentlemen, then belongs to Europe, and to Europe alone. Europe will subdue the world, and will spread over it its