Page:Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje - Mohammedanism (1916).djvu/156

 Rh The principal condition for a fruitful friendly intercourse of this kind is that we make the Moslim world an object of continual serious investigation in our intellectual centres.

Having spent a good deal of my life in seeking for the right method of associating with modern thought the thirty-five millions of Mohammedans whom history has placed under the guardianship of my own country, I could not help drawing some practical conclusions from the lessons of history which I have tried to reduce to their most abridged form. There is no lack of pessimists, whose wisdom has found its poetic form in the words of Kipling:

To me, with regard to the Moslim world, these words seem almost a blasphemy. The experience acquired by adapting myself to the peculiarities of Mohammedans, and by daily conversation with them for about twenty years, has impressed me with the firm conviction that between Islâm and the modern world an understanding is to be attained, and that no period has offered a better chance of furthering it than the time in which we are living. To Kipling's poetical despair I think we have a right to prefer the words of a broad-minded modern Hindu writer: "The pity is that men, led astray by