Page:The International Journal of Psycho-Analysis II 1921 1.djvu/52

 44 OWEN UERKELEY-IIILL ||

been acquainted long before the utterance of Chapter VII |

of the Koran, which is entitled the "History of Mosc>". In his |

later days Mohammed was wont to remark that "(iod has never J

chosen any one to be a prophet who had not, like Moses, like;

David, or like himself, tended sheep in the wilderness". There is little doubt that as Mohammed grew older he identificcl himself more and more with Moses, partly l>ecause he felt himself to be like him and wanted to be more like him, and partly l>ecause he found in the Jehovah of Moses the prototype of the Allah of his own creative phantasy.

That Mohammed was now becoming the subject of intense repression in certain aspects of his mental development, nothing affords a better measure than the phenomenal chastity of the young Arab at this period of his life, who, although he belonged ,

to a race which, according to Wavell, * has absorbed nine-tenths ||

of the entire amount of the erotic passion destined for the whole r

of mankind, the correctness of his deportment and the purity of his life were so exceptional that some of his biographers have been led to ascribe the preservation of his chastity to the special ^

intervention of Providence. - g

Certainly Mohammed's life had been u[) to Uiis time free from |^

any sexual experience, a fact to which he bore witness in later. ^^

life. For example, he relates how one night he had entered the |^

town to divert himself; "even as youtlis are wont by night to f

divert themselves," when he was arrested by heavenly strains of |-,

music and, sitting down, slept till morning. Thus he escaped temp- f

tation. "And after this", said Mohammed, "I no more sought after vice; even until 1 had attained unto the prophetic ofTice."' ^

If Mecca, in the days of the youthful Mohammed, was anydiing |

like the Mecca of the twentieth century as so vividly described by ■:

Wavell, « who maintains that the inhabitants of the holy cities, (Mecca and Medina), are given to all the vices of the cities of the Plain and a few more besides of modern introduction, we are *

left with only two possible alternatives to explain the purity of y

Mohammed's life, viz. either he was endowed with the most ex- i

ceptional powers of repression or his sexual desire was extremely |,.

exiguous. ^

« A Modern Pilgrim in Mecca. = Muir: Life of Mahomet p. 19. •' ci/i. cit., p. 137.

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