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Coherence of the Incoherence
 Islamic History and Thought

33

Series Editorial
Series EditorBoard

Peter Adamson Jack Tannous

Beatrice Gründler
Beatrice Gruendler Isabel Toral-Niehoff
Ahmad
Ahmad Khan
Khan Manolis
Manolis Ulbricht
Ulbricht

Jack Tannous
Advisory Editorial Board
Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly
Binyamin Abrahamov Konradto Hirschler
research on any geographic areaUlbricht
within the expansive Islamic
AsadtheQ.eve
Ahmed
of Islam untilJames Howard-Johnston
Manolis
world, stretching from the Mediterranean China, and dated to
Mehmetcan Akpinar Maher Jarrar(Arabic, Persian,
any period from the early modern era. This

Abdulhadi Alajmi Marcus Milwright

series contains original Jan Just Witkam
monographs, translations

Mohammad-Ali Amir-Moezzi Harry Munt

Syriac, Greek, and Latin) and edited volumes.

Massimo Arezou Azad

Campanini Gabriel Said Reynolds
Walid A. Saleh
Jens Scheiner
Godefroid de Callataÿ

Farhad Daftary
trice Gruendler Delfina Serrano
Maria Conterno

Bea Wael Hallaq Georges Tamer

Ahmad Khan

Jack Tannous
Islamic History and Thought provides a platform for scholarly research
Isabel
on any Toral-Niehoff
geographic area within the expansive Islamic world,
stretching from the Mediterranean to China, and dated to any
Manolis Ulbricht
period from the eve of Islam until the early modern era. This series
contains original monographs, translations (Arabic, Persian, Syriac,
Jan Justand
Greek, Witkam
Latin) and edited volumes.
 Coherence of the Incoherence

Between Al-Ghazali and Ibn Rushd on Nature

and the Cosmos

Edward Omar Moad

gp
2023
Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA
www.gorgiaspress.com
Copyright © 2023 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the
prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC.

2023 ‫ܝ‬
1

ISBN 978-1-4632-4497-2 ISSN 2643-6906

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available

at the Library of Congress.
Printed in the United States of America
 This book is dedicated to all who have believed in God and
wondered – those who came before us, and those yet to be.

‘But if the nature of oneness is denied, the nature of being is denied,

and the consequence of the denial of being is nothingness.’

Ibn Rushd, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Table of Contents ....................................................................... vii

Acknowledgments ....................................................................... xi
Introduction .............................................................................. xiii
Chapter One. Introductions .......................................................... 1
Section 1.1. Taqlīd of the posers .......................................... 3
Section 1.2. Ghazālī’s method and parameters .................. 17
Section 1.3. An ‘imperfect refutation’ ................................ 24
Section 1.4. Ibn Rushd’s rationale, disclaimers, and
methods ...................................................................... 30
Discussion 1
Chapter Two. Basic cosmological concepts ................................ 43
Section 2.1. Agents and causes........................................... 44
Section 2.2. First proof of cosmic pre-eternity:
Possibilities and eternities .......................................... 50
Chapter Three. Second proof of cosmic pre-eternity ................. 59
Section 3.1. Time and eternity in the second proof ........... 60
Section 3.2. Time, eternity, and the wahm ......................... 68
Section 3.3. A ‘naïve’ philosophical position ..................... 72
Chapter Four. Imaging creation: Ghazālī’s first objection to
the first proof ..................................................................... 79
Section 4.1. Ibn Rushd vs. Ghazālī on ‘eternal will’ .......... 82
Section 4.2. The efficient cause of a no-fault divorce ........ 84
Section 4.3. The has-been that could be forever ................ 92
Section 4.4. On Divine Will and blind dates .................... 108
Section 4.5. Under a different heaven.............................. 119
Section 4.6. Roundabout .................................................. 130

vii
viii COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

Chapter Five. Time, space, and the imagination ..................... 133

Section 5.1. Two models of time ...................................... 134
Section 5.2. Space-time analogy ...................................... 140
Section 5.3. The direction of time .................................... 144
Section 5.4. Some interesting implications ...................... 147
Section 5.5. Time and possible worlds ............................. 153
Chapter Six. The ontological argument for cosmic pre-
eternity ............................................................................. 163
Section 6.1. Third proof of cosmic pre-eternity ............... 163
Section 6.2. Possibility as potency ................................... 168
Section 6.3. Possibility in itself ........................................ 172
Section 6.4. Equivocating between possibilities .............. 176
Chapter Seven. The matter of possibility ................................. 183
Section 7.1. Fourth proof of cosmic pre-eternity ............. 184
Section 7.2. Possibility and intellect ................................ 189
Section 7.3. Argument from impossibility and
accidents ................................................................... 192
Section 7.4. Argument from the possibility of souls ........ 198
Discussion 2
Chapter Eight. Cosmic post-eternity ........................................ 205
Section 8.1. Revisiting the eternal past ............................ 208
Section 8.2. The identity of indiscernible eternal
recurrences ............................................................... 214
Section 8.3. Ibn Rushd’s faith-based science .................... 215
Section 8.4. The substance of annihilation ...................... 218
Discussion 3
Chapter Nine. The act and the agent ....................................... 227
Section 9.1. The act: a stirring analogy (or: the
substance of annihilation, part 2) ............................ 228
Section 9.2. The agent: semantics and responsibility ...... 236
Discussion 17
Chapter Ten. The nature of nature........................................... 247
Section 10.1. Miracles, resurrection, and natural
science ...................................................................... 248
Section 10.2. Necessity, causation, and agency ............... 254
Section 10.3. Induction .................................................... 259
Section 10.4. Beyond naturalism ..................................... 264
 TABLE OF CONTENTS ix

Section 10.5. Nature, necessity, and the conditions of

being ......................................................................... 270
Chapter Eleven. Two approaches ............................................. 281
Section 11.1. The first approach ...................................... 282
Section 11.2. The second approach.................................. 290
Section 11.3. Mission impossible ..................................... 298
Section 11.4. Multiple realizability .................................. 304
Discussion 3
Chapter Twelve. Between the agent and the act ..................... 313
Section 12.1. One from one.............................................. 315
Section 12.2. Emanation and its discontents ................... 318
Section 12.3. The true one and its possibility .................. 324
Section 12.4. The true one and its knowledge ................. 332
Section 12.5. Some plausible premises ............................ 336
Conclusion ................................................................................ 345
Bibliography ............................................................................. 355
Index......................................................................................... 363
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Reprinted by permission from Springer Nature Customer Service

Centre GmbH: Springer Nature. SOPHIA. (Al-Ghazali’s Position
on the ‘Second Proof’ of the ‘Philosophers’ for the Eternity of the
World, in the First Discussion of the Incoherence of the Philo-
sophers, Edward Moad). COPYRIGHT (2014).

xi
INTRODUCTION

Narratives of the history of Islamic philosophy usually dedicate

at least a chapter to the philosophical debate recorded in the
Tahāfut al-falāsifah (‘Incoherence of the Philosophers’), by Abū
Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (b. 1053–1111), and the Tahāfut al-tahāfut
(‘Incoherence of the Incoherence’) by Abū al-Wālid ibn Rushd
(1126–1198). The basic story will be familiar to most readers of
either the history of Islam or the history of philosophy. Ghazālī,
a leading Muslim theologian of his time and defender of a version
of Sunni orthodoxy based on the ʾAshʿarī school of theology,
composed Tahāfut al-falāsifah in response to what he viewed as
the threat posed to Islam by Greek influenced Muslim
philosophers like Abū Naṣr al-Fārābī (870–950) and Abū Alī ibn
Sīnā (980–1037). Ibn Rushd, himself both a jurist of Islamic law
and a student of Greek philosophy, rose to its defense in his
memorably titled response.
That simple summary says little other than to locate the
event, rightly, as part of the long, rich encounter between Greek
philosophy and Abrahamic revealed religion, beginning centuries
before Islam and continuing long after the Tahāfut debate. One
might alternatively describe this encounter, in terms amenable to
a Qur’anic view of religious history, as one between Greek
philosophy and Islam, extending centuries before the arrival of
the Prophet Muhammad. In either case it is, among other things,
an episode of the controversial and complicated relation between
‘Athens and Jerusalem,’ which for the Muslim is between ‘Athens
and Mecca,’ as well.
As for what other things this debate represents, opinions
differ widely among both Muslims and non-Muslims, often
xiii
xiv COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

depending on their various sectarian and political as much as

theological or philosophical inclinations. The magnitude and
nature of the historical impact of the debate is consequently a
subject of some controversy. Whether it was as pivotal to the
course of Muslim intellectual history (and either for good or ill)
as some claim, it has played a significant role in the course of my
own intellectual journey as a Muslim individual. That role has
been to provoke contemplation over the questions it raises about
whether and how we might comprehend the relation between
God and the world in which we live and think.
Thus I am primarily interested here in what we might learn
from it in that respect, and not in debating its role in the course
of Muslim history or the current condition of the collective
Muslim ‘world’ or ‘mind.’ This book is first an exercise in
philosophical theology, an intellectual history only secondarily
and insofar as that serves its first purpose, and is in no sense
whatsoever another indictment or ‘diagnosis.’ Its subject is worth
the attention of anyone similarly interested, for in the Tahāfut
debate one finds rigorous scrutiny of several of the main problems
of philosophical theology, from the vantage of at least three
different theoretical paradigms, by some of the sharpest minds in
the classical tradition of philosophical theology.
Ghazālī himself, being trained in, and perhaps at the time
the leading representative of, the ʾAshʿarī school of systematic
Islamic theology (al-‘ilm al-kalām), was nevertheless so innovative
a thinker that to this day discussion continues over whether he in
fact remained ‘true’ to its standard doctrine. He divided Tahāfut
al-falāsifah into twenty ‘discussions,’ each dedicated to an
exposition and critique of proofs offered for a specific doctrine
held by the ‘falāsifah.’ These are Ghazālī’s representations,
primarily of Ibn Sīnā and Fārābī, the leading figures of Islamic
peripatetic philosophy at the time, who brought their own unique
synthesis of Aristotelian and neo-Platonic ideas to bear on
questions pertaining to the existence, nature and attributes of
God, His relation to the cosmos, and the possibility of human
knowledge thereof. Ibn Rushd, expressing fundamental
differences with Ibn Sina as well as Ghazālī, followed the latter’s
arrangement in his point by point response. He applies what he
 INTRODUCTION xv

views as a more purely Aristotelian approach, which nevertheless

includes a number of innovative ideas in response to problems
raised in the encounter between Greek philosophy and Abrahamic
theology.
Others more capable than I have made valuable contri-
butions related to this subject. These include (among others)
Frank Griffel, Ebrahim Moosa, Alladin Yaqub, Jon McGinnis,
Richard Frank, Oliver Leaman, Lenn Goodman, Charles Butter-
worth, Richard Taylor, and of course, the authors of the two
translations I depend on here: Michael Marmura and Simon Van
Den Bergh. I acknowledge the audacity involved in plunging into
this without first mastering the classical Arabic of the original
texts, but take some comfort in recalling that the key figures in
the Tahāfut debate itself depended on translations for what they
brought into it from Greek philosophy. Like theirs, mine is a
primarily philosophical rather than historical or philological
interest. That is not to say that I do this in complete ignorance of
the debate’s linguistic and historical context, or under any illusion
that much of philosophical value is accessible from it in complete
isolation from these contexts. I attend to them, however, not for
their own sake but only or the purpose of clarifying ideas that
may inform a living Islamic philosophical theology, continually
developing and responsive to the questions from which these
ideas rose, and those they raise.
Capable scholarship already exists on the life, works, and
context of the participants in this debate. Questions over their
intentions, genuinely held positions, and the impact (or lack
thereof) of the debate on Muslim history are highly contested.
While all this is undeniably important, I refrain from wading far
into that pond and instead refer the interested or unfamiliar
reader to the existing literature. It may be, as some have claimed,
that everything Ghazālī says in this debate is solely for the sake
of argument, and reflects nothing of his positively held views. It
may be, as others have claimed, that everything Ibn Rushd says
in response is merely in the dialectical mode of discourse, and not
reflective of his genuine philosophical position. I do not agree
with either of these theses, taken categorically, but I do not aim
to argue here over what the ‘genuinely held’ views are of either
xvi COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

party, or what he went to his grave believing. Aside from its being
beyond my capacity, I am not sure how such a question could be
definitively resolved, or what relevance it has outside of the
presumption that appealing to the authority of one or another
party is the proper method of approaching the issues they
debated.
I intend to focus instead on the content of the debate itself,
and to analyze the actual arguments deployed therein in order to
discover the basic philosophical suppositions at its roots. I do not
intend to make a final judgment as to which of these disputants
‘won’ the debate, and certainly not to advocate for any of the
politicized proclamations regarding the fate of the ‘Muslim world’
for which it has often been made a foil. While at points I do argue
that one or another side has the stronger argument, I am most
attracted to the prospect, wherever possible, of arriving at
productive syntheses or theoretical alternatives by working
through the real or apparent opposition of compelling philo-
sophical considerations. Short of that, I want to explain as clearly
as possible the conceptual roots of the conflict, hoping in the
process to discover, in the details of these arguments, some ideas
useful either for the solution of philosophical problems or simply
for the expansion of the philosophical imagination. That is one
reason I have chosen the subtitle Coherence of the Incoherence. The
other is that, it being only a matter of time until someone wrote
a book with that title, why not me? I fully expect – and sincerely
hope – that someone else will write a book (or at least a review)
entitled ‘Incoherence of the Coherence of the Incoherence.’
If each book should have just one thesis, then mine here
would be that the Tahāfut debate is a genuinely philosophical and
philosophically interesting event. It is not reducible, as many
have construed, to just another episode of conflict between
‘religion and philosophy’ sharply differentiated, or even as some
have claimed, a devastating attack on reason in Islam. These
portrayals overlook the sophistication and depth of the
contributions of its participants (contributions which I seek to
expose and appreciate), as well as the Muslim philosophical
tradition as a whole. One can support such a thesis only by
 INTRODUCTION xvii

exhibiting the philosophical dynamic operative in the debate,

which I will do throughout the twelve chapters of this volume.
In the process, I wish to reinforce the correction currently
being made to the orientalist habit of equating ‘philosophy’ and
‘philosophers’ in the Muslim context with falsafah and the falāsifah.
For the effect of this habit is to suppose that, while a European the
likes of a Kierkegaard or Nietzsche can be a ‘philosopher’ (so that
even disavowal does not absolve you), a non-European Muslim of
the pre-modern period must show due allegiance to Aristotle to
deserve such branding. Obviously, ‘philosophy’ has a completely
different sort of connotation from falsafah, which refers to a specific
school of thought rather than a mode of thinking. Given that
philosophy is typically considered, and for good reason, to be the
mode of thinking by which one approaches intellectual autonomy,
the implications of this orientalist presumption is to a priori exclude
Muslims from that possibility.
For that reason, I will be using the terms ‘philosophy’ and
‘philosophers’ differently from falsafah and falāsifah. We will use
the latter specifically to refer to the school of Fārābī and Ibn Sina.
That, as we will find, is how Ghazālī used the terms. I by no means
intend that to imply that they were not genuine philosophers,
somehow lacking in intellectual autonomy under the influence of
‘Greek’ ideas. That is far from the case. I simply intended to avoid
a discursive trap similar to what would occur if we were to use
the term ‘rationalist’ synonymously with ‘philosopher’ and then
try to discuss the philosophical merits of the arguments of the
early modern British empiricists. Falsafah is a school of philo-
sophy, not philosophy as such.
While the twenty discussions of the Tahāfut debate are
entangled in a delicious web of metaphysical and epistemological
problems, they can nevertheless be usefully (though roughly)
classified according to whether they pertain to nature and the
cosmos on one hand, or to God and the soul on the other. With
an abundance of argumentative material to analyze, and from
three different philosophical perspectives, the task proved too
large for one book. I have thus divided it into two parts,
corresponding respectively to these two categories of problems.
The subject matter of this book, therefore, is the ‘coherence of the
xviii COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

incoherence’ between Al-Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd over nature and

the cosmos. Its sequel, God willing, will address the coherence of
the incoherence between them over God and the soul.
This volume consequently focuses on the first, second, third,
fourth, and seventeenth of the twenty discussions. In chapter 1, I
will examine the largely neglected introductions with which
Ghazālī prefaced his book, and the implications of the lack of
attention Ibn Rushd pays to those introductions in his response.
In the process, I will make my initial case for treating the debate
as a genuinely philosophical exercise. Chapters 2–7 are dedicated
to the first discussion of the Tahāfut, over whether the falāsifah
have successfully proven that the cosmos is necessarily ‘pre-
eternal.’ Covering four of their ‘proofs,’ this is the longest
discussion in the debate, for the reason (as we will see) that
Ghazālī uses it in several places as a heuristic vehicle, to isolate
and examine a number issues pivotal in other discussions,
crucially including the nature of time and modality, as well as the
proper methodology for metaphysical inquiry.
Chapter 2 will begin by examining part of the fourth
discussion, before introducing the falāsifah’s ‘first proof’ of cosmic
pre-eternity, in order to introduce some of the key cosmological
concepts (e.g. causation, agency, and eternity) on which the first
discussion turns. We will postpone a detailed examination of that
discussion’s ‘first proof,’ however and Chapter 3 will focus instead
on the ‘second proof,’ and Ghazālī’s position, expressed there, on
the relation of time to both God and the cosmos, the clarification
of which is necessary for properly understanding the aims of his
objections to the first proof. Chapter 4 will then return to the
debate over the first proof, and examine the several issues raised
therein, including whether the notion of an eternal will is
coherent, and whether cosmic pre-eternity entails the absurdity
of an actual infinite magnitude. Chapter 5 will return once again
to the debate over the second proof, drawing from it some
interesting implications over the nature of time. Chapters 6 and 7
focus, respectively, on the third and fourth proofs, both premised
on the priority of the possibility of the cosmos to any hypothetical
cosmic beginning. There, we will examine the various notions of
possibility involved, their relation to time and matter, as well as
 INTRODUCTION xix

the role here of Ibn Sina’s distinction between existence and

essence.
The second discussion, covered in chapter 8, is over the
falāsifah’s proofs for cosmic ‘post-eternity,’ which Ghazālī claims
is not, like its pre-eternity, rationally impossible. I argue, on the
contrary, that Ghazālī’s argument against the possibility of cosmic
pre-eternity also precludes the possibility of its post-eternity.
Aside from that, this chapter will do a number of things. Since Ibn
Rushd opens his response to the second discussion with a final
defense of cosmic pre-eternity, I will take the occasion of
reviewing that to summarize my own case that the proofs in
question fail, as Ghazālī claims, to demonstrate its rational
necessity. I will follow that with an original argument, based on
premises deployed by both the falāsifah and Ibn Rushd in the first
discussion, that cosmic eternity in either direction is impossible.
We will then review the debate over an empirical argument for
cosmic post-eternity, followed by the last and most interesting
argument, centering on the question over what annihilation
means in relation to the cosmos and by implication, the
ontological status, in relation to its motion, of the cosmos itself.
The third discussion is over whether, and in what sense, we
can understand the cosmos as an act of God, and thus closely
relates to the fourth discussion, which centered on Ghazālī’s
critique of Ibn Sina’s unique version of the cosmological proof,
ultimately poses the same question. Chapter 9 will examine the
first two of three parts of the third discussion, regarding the
nature of the act and that of the agent. The first part follows up
on the problem introduced in the last part of the previous chapter,
leading to a conception of the cosmos as a ‘continual creation’ or
‘perpetual becoming,’ as Ghazālī and Ibn Rushd, respectively,
express it. We will consider the degree to which their positions
converge here, in contrast to Ibn Sina’s. Then, we will review and
evaluate their disappointing debate over the concept of the
‘agent.’
The seventeenth discussion, finally, is where Ghazālī
famously (or infamously) refutes what he takes to be the
falāsifah’s denial of the possibility of miracles, and where our
discussion over the nature of the cosmos and nature itself leads
xx COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

to questions about the nature of knowledge and the possibility of

natural science. In chapters 10 and 11 we examine this discussion
in detail, clarifying the concepts of causality involved, the
epistemological and ontological concerns it raises with respect to
the possibility of miracles and natural science, as well as the
question arising from the apparent ambiguity of Ghazālī’s dual
‘approach’ to the issue. I will offer an interpretation of Ghazālī’s
argument, which reconciles his two approaches as alternative
perspectives rather than mutually exclusive positions while
accounting for Ibn Rushd’s most serious objection.
All these discussions raise theological questions. For the
nature of the cosmos, for all of the participants in this debate,
turns on the nature of its relation to God as its single First Cause,
and in turn then on the nature of God Himself. This connection
comes out most explicitly, however, in a part of the third
discussion, over the ‘relation between agent and the act,’ in which
the participants grapple over how God’s unity can be reconciled
with the plurality of a cosmos of which He is the single ultimate
cause. We will cover this topic, as a fitting segue to the second
volume, in the last chapter of this one. For it leads us from
questions about the nature of the cosmos to questions about God’s
unity, attributes, and knowledge, all interestingly related to
questions raised over the nature of the soul, the two categories of
problems to explore in the sequel to this book.
CHAPTER ONE.
INTRODUCTIONS

As Ghazālī vividly describes in the preface to the Tahāfut al-

falāsifah, the problem that directly motivated it was not
philosophy, falsafah or the falāsifah as such. Instead, it was a
group of imitators who he says misunderstood the falāsifah,
adopted a posture of blind allegiance (taqlīd) toward this
misguided image of them, and consequently abandoned Islamic
belief and practice, thinking that this made them superior. We
may call them ‘philosophical posers’. The two problematic
misconceptions Ghazālī says they held were that the falāsifah
alone were capable of certain knowledge in metaphysics, and that
they rejected religion. His two stated purposes for writing the
Tahāfut are thus to demonstrate both that the most prominent
falāsifah did not possess infallible metaphysical insight, and that
they did not reject the ‘fundamental principles of religion’ (2000
pp. 1–3).
In Section 1.1, we will examine Ghazālī’s description of the
posers in the context of the interplay between the two rival socio-
epistemic frameworks directly pertinent to Ghazālī’s thought –
that of the mutakallimūn and falāsifah, respectively. We will see
that the philosophical posers, as Ghazālī describes them, are
functionally equivalent, epistemologically and socially, to the
mutakallimūn as described by al-Fārābī. Moreover, the problem
Ghazālī thinks the posers pose is similar to that which Fārābī
thinks the mutakallimūn pose; that is, they threaten the integrity
of the public religion. That is one side of the problem. The other
side of the problem, which I suggest motivates Ghazālī as much

1
2 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

as it does Fārābī, is that they threaten the integrity of true

philosophy. Consequently, Ghazālī has not written this book to
dissuade people from philosophy, but to help philosophical posers
become more genuinely philosophical.
Secondly, we will consider an apparent contradiction
between Ghazālī’s preface and his conclusion. In the preface, as
we will see, he asserts that the leading falāsifah did not deny the
fundamental principles of Islam, and promises to demonstrate this
fact in the course of the book. In its conclusion, however, he lays
down a verdict of apostasy against them for three of their
doctrines. This contradiction cannot be resolved. I suggest that
we can explain it, however, by entertaining yet another parallel
between Ghazālī and Fārābī. That is, that given Fārābī’s political
model, it would be reasonable to deal with the problem of
philosophical posers in a similarly contradictory manner; that is
to demonstrate theoretically that the problematic positions are
not apostasy, while declaring legally that they are.
In Section 1.2, we will examine the implications of Ghazālī’s
denying that mastery of arithmetic and geometry are necessary
for understanding metaphysical argument, while affirming that a
mastery of logic is required, including questions it raises about
the possibility of metaphysical knowledge and its relation to
natural science (both of which remain open philosophical issues).
I argue that, in explicitly accepting the falsafah standard of logical
demonstration as the epistemic framework of the discussion, and
making that transparent and available to the reader, Ghazālī is
adopting a genuinely philosophical method. This is not, however,
simply by virtue of his accepting the falāsifah’s standard, but
rather by his empowering the reader to evaluate the result of the
debate (including the epistemic standard under which it is
conducted) independently.
Then, we will review Ghazālī’s clearly defined parameters,
limiting the debate to the arguments of Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, and
only those for positions posing what Ghazālī calls a substantial
contradiction to principles of religion, with the objective of
showing that they fail to meet their own standards of logical
demonstration. As we will see, Ghazālī adopts a hermeneutic that
effectively defines a ‘religious principle’ as a metaphysical claim
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 3

consequently immune to falsification by any demonstratively

proven natural fact. This presents the strongest case for disputing
my construal of Ghazālī’s ambitions as philosophical. That case is
neither that he disagreed with a specific group of Greek-
influenced thinkers dubbed the falāsifah, nor that his motive is to
defend the veracity of certain ‘religious’ ideas. Rather, it is, as Ibn
Rushd complains, that his project is purely negative – to refute,
rather than to prove any positive position of his own. Whether
that objection is sustainable is a question about the proper
method of philosophy, and not just its aim.
In Section 1.3, we will examine the indications and
implications of Ibn Rushd’s apparent ignorance of Ghazālī’s
extensive introductions. Ibn Rushd’s own minimal statement of
purpose (to show that the arguments in the Tahāfut are
inconclusive) allows me space to proceed on the working
hypothesis that he was motivated by genuine philosophical
concern over the questions Ghazālī raised. I will make the case
for viewing his objectives as ultimately similar to Ghazālī’s rather
than diametrically opposed; not so as to erase their fundamental
disagreement, but to render it philosophically useful. In Section
1.4, we will examine another section of Ibn Rushd’s text, wherein
he expresses his objectives and method in more detail. On that
basis, I will argue for approaching the Tahāfut debate as a
philosophically productive dialectic of the sort Fārābī describes
in his Book of Letters.

SECTION 1.1. TAQLĪD OF THE POSERS

After opening his preface with a supplication, Ghazālī lodges his
complaint. ‘I have seen a group who, believing themselves in
possession of a distinctiveness from companion and peer by virtue
of a superior quick wit and intelligence…have entirely cast off the
reigns of religion through multifarious beliefs’ (2000 pp. 1–2). In
spite of their self-image, Ghazālī insists,
There is no basis (mustanad) for their unbelief other than
traditional, conventional imitation (taqlīd), like the imitation
of Jews and Christians, since their upbringing and that of their
offspring has followed a course other than the religion of
Islam, their fathers and forefathers having [also] followed
4 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

[conventional imitation], and no [basis] other than

speculative investigation (baḥth naẓarī), an outcome of their
stumbling over the tails of sophistical doubts that divert from
the direction of truth, and their being deceived by embellished
imaginings akin to the glitter of the mirage... (2000 p. 2).

By insisting that this group’s unbelief is based on either ‘imitation’

(taqlīd) or speculative investigation (baḥth naẓarī), Ghazālī of
course means to imply that they have no basis in knowledge. The
basic meaning of taqlīd is, ‘the unquestioning acceptance of the
guidance of others or the uncritical acquiescence to the opinions
of people whom one holds in esteem’ (Frank, 1989). The one who
so acquiesces is muqallid. For the mutakallimūn, taqlīd came to be
understood in opposition to taṣdīq , a term that literally means to
assent to the truth of something (and therefore opposite of takdīb,
or ‘denial’), but which underwent an extensive process of
technical precising within the Ash‘ari school (Frank, 1989). In the
logic of the falāsifah, meanwhile, taṣdīq was used to connote
propositional content (to which one can ‘assent’ or deny), as
opposed to tasawwur (or ‘conception’); that is, simply the under-
standing of the meaning of a term or concept, outside of any
proposition.
Aside from being muqallid, according to Ghazālī, this group’s
misguidance was a result, specifically, of two false conceptions
they had about the falāsifah. First, they took them to be uniquely
capable of real knowledge, especially with regard to metaphysics.
Secondly, they believed that the falāsifah denied religion
altogether. This makes it clear that Ghazālī is not referring here
to the falāsifah themselves, but to a type of deluded philosophical
poser.
The source of their unbelief is in their hearing high-sounding
names such as ‘Socrates,’ ‘Hippocrates,’ ‘Plato,’ ‘Aristotle,’ and
their likes and the exaggeration and misguidedness of groups of
their followers in describing their minds; the excellence of their
principles; the exactitude of their geometrical, logical, natural,
and metaphysical sciences – and in [describing these as] being
alone (by reason of excessive intelligence and acumen)
[capable] of extracting these hidden things. [It is also in
hearing] what [these followers] say about [their masters –
namely,] that concurrent with the sobriety of their intellect and
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 5

the abundance of their merit is their denial of revealed laws and

religious confessions and their rejection of the details of
religious and sectarian [teaching], believing them to be man-
made laws and embellished tricks (2000 p. 2).

The philosophical posers appear to have made a valid inference

from false premises. For, if the philosophers both enjoyed certain
knowledge (especially of metaphysics) and denied revealed
religion then it follows that revealed religions are false. The
question then is why did they believe the premises, especially the
first? What evidence could lead them to believe that the falāsifah
were in command of such knowledge? According to Ghazālī (as
we will see), the writings of the philosophers themselves reveal
differences between them, indicating uncertainty. Thus, Ghazālī
asserts, pathological rather than epistemological factors move the
posers to these extreme claims.
When this struck their hearing, that which was reported of
[the philosophers’] beliefs finding agreement with their
nature, they adorned themselves with the embracing of
unbelief – siding with the throng of the virtuous, as they
claim; affiliating with them; exalting themselves above aiding
the masses and the commonality; and disdaining to be content
with the religious beliefs of their forebears. [They have done
so] thinking that the show of cleverness in abandoning the
[traditional] imitation (taqlīd) of what is true by embarking
on the imitation of what is false is a beauteous thing, being
unaware that moving from one [mode of] imitation to another
is folly and confusedness (2000 p. 2).

In Ghazālī’s assessment, there is no epistemic difference between

the poser philosophers and the common religious believer,
inasmuch as they are both engaged in taqlīd. The former only
differ with respect to the morality of their motives; and this is
what inspires Ghazālī’s disgust. ‘The imbeciles among the masses
stand detached from the infamy of this abyss,’ he writes, ‘for there
is no craving in their nature to become clever by emulating those
who follow the ways of error’ (2000 p. 3). In what follows, we
will examine the concept of taqlīd in the context of the interaction
between the rival epistemic frameworks of the mutakallimūn and
falāsifah.
6 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

For the mutakallimūn of the ‘Ash‘arī school, the concern

begins with the question of the conditions of imān (that is, of
being a ‘true believer’ in Islam), understood traditionally as assent
(taṣdīq ) in the mind, profession with the tongue (of the testimony
of faith), and action (in accordance with Islamic imperatives) in
the limbs (Frank, 1989). Since for the ‘Ash‘arī the core of the
matter lay in taṣdīq, they naturally raised the question of precisely
what that is. Abu Hasan Al-ʾAshʿarī, the founder of the school,
differentiated taṣdīq from mere verbal profession, as an internal,
psychic act. The sort of taṣdīq necessary to validate true belief,
specifically, entails knowledge. The line of thought, in brief, is
something like the following.
Merely reporting what others have said (‘they say there is
one God’) does not constitute real assent. Sincere assent involves
taking ownership of it – saying it yourself rather than reporting
that someone else has. This, however, is not achieved simply by
omitting the verbal ‘they say’ or ‘so and so says’ from the
statement. An internal element must make the difference, and this
cannot simply be an emotional attachment. The promise of a
reward or threat of punishment can provoke an emotional
attachment with assent to a proposition the meaning of which one
has no idea, but there is no sincerity in that. Understanding the
proposition is necessary, and not only the meaning but also its
truth. For this, it is necessary for the assenter to have considered
the evidence or justification.
This evidence must moreover be of the right sort. For taṣdīq
in God cannot be tentative. That is, it cannot be subject to any
possibility of change, given any change of conditions that might
raise doubts therein. An extreme example of such a situation is
given in a prophetic forecast of the coming of al-Masīh al-dajjāl
(‘false Messiah’), according to which he would make a bedouin’s
deceased parents appear in front of him and implore him to
worship the false messiah as God (Sunan Ibn Majah, 4077). A
person would only be secure from such a tribulation to the extent
that their conviction is rooted in something more firm than the
teaching of their parents. In general, to the extent that one’s
assent is tentative, it is not truly assent to God as such, but to
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 7

those contingencies on which it depends (whether or not one is

aware of this dependence). Taṣdīq must therefore be indefeasible.
The way to this, for the mutakallimūn, is rational
demonstration immune to all such contingency. This ultimately
leaves three sources: 1) necessary knowledge (al-‘ilm al-ḍārūrī),
that is, self-evidently certain first principles, 2) the immediate
reports of the senses, and 3) inferential or ‘acquired’ (iktisābi)
knowledge. The aim of al-‘ilm al-kalām, then, is to produce or
preserve proper taṣdīq in the fundamental principles of Islam,
through inferential knowledge of them, arrived at by inference
from premises that are ultimately either self-evidently certain or
given by the senses. This will result in a faith that is not tentative
in any way, but would constitute complete, unreserved, and
indefeasible commitment.
This is not just a process of constructing proofs, but also one
of defending them and their premises from various objections. As
the real and imagined objections arise, the scale of the task
consequently expands, the envisioned certainty becomes
inevitably more elusive and exclusive, and the section of the
Muslim community one can reasonably expect to attain it
decreases. This naturally raises the question of its status as a
requisite of true belief. This could be a question of what counts
as ‘knowledge’ of something (e.g. must one be cognizant of a
sound, complete proof with answers to all possible objections?).
Alternatively, it could be a question of whether (or to what
degree) ‘knowledge’ is a requirement of ‘true belief’ (at least for
the common people, unschooled in systematic reasoning).
‘Unschooled’ people tend less often to experience doubts
about the basic beliefs of their respective communities, in spite of
their lack of rational justification. This fact seems not to have
escaped the notice of the mutakallimūn. Conversely (thanks no
doubt to peer review), the condition of certain knowledge, free of
any taqlīd, appeared ever more elusive for even the best of the
mutakallimūn. Thus, there was a tendency toward hardening the
standard for ‘knowledge’, while softening the minimal standard
of ‘true belief’, at least for the common people (for whom only
some kind of subjective certainty is then required, rather than
‘true’ knowledge). For the unfortunate intellectuals, all too aware
8 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

of their own epistemic condition, and who thus suffered doubts

of the sort to which the uneducated are immune, there was no
such relief. The requisite subjective certainty could not be
achieved without objective certainty; that is, apodictic proof. A
Cartesian ‘evil genius’ was at the door, as indicated by the events
of Ghazālī’s autobiographical narrative in al-Munqidh min al-ḍalāl.
There, Ghazālī famously recounts his journey ‘from the
lowlands of taqlīd to the highlands of taṣdīq’ (1980 p. 53). This
began he says, with a realization that children of Jews, Christians,
and Muslims generally grew up holding whatever beliefs they
were raised with, and a consequent desire to distinguish on
independent grounds the true from the false in what he was
taught. As we saw, Ghazālī was not the first to note that the
majority of Muslims, no less than others, base their belief on some
degree of ‘blind faith.’ Here in the Tahāfut (written earlier), he
mentions only the taqlīd of Christians and Jews, probably on
account of the presumption, not that Muslims do not also engage
in taqlīd, but that only a Muslim could fully escape that condition
while remaining committed to his faith. Indeed, as we saw, the
mutakallimūn posited true imān as the aim and outcome of pure
taṣdīq.
What results in Ghazālī’s reported case is a process of
hyperbolic doubt showing even the senses and ‘necessary
knowledge’ to be defeasible, leaving him in a state of global
skepticism until being delivered by a divine ‘light’ that Ghazālī
describes as cast into his heart by God. There is a corresponding
shift in Ghazālī’s epistemology, from the earlier ʾAshʿarī
framework (Frank, 1991). For one, he expands the application of
the concept of taqlīd beyond that of religious belief to belief in
general. He is also more empirically cognizant of the phenomena
of individual belief and belief-formation and its dependence on
the social context. This leads him to a more acute awareness of
the extraordinary, almost miraculous nature of the condition
ultimately entailed by the ʾAshʿarī notion of taṣdīq.
Seen in that light, Ghazālī’s labelling of his philosophical
posers as muqallid is not a grave insult so much as an assertion
that they are no different from the vast majority of humankind,
whether Muslims or non-Muslims, sophisticated intellectuals or
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 9

common believers. For in relation to this standard, in fact, the

vast majority even of the mutakallimūn are muqallid in some form.
If not to the beliefs of their parents, then they are in abeyance to
the positions of the schools and teachers of their respective
allegiances; and if not that, then to unfounded commitment to the
very premises on which their sophisticated proofs rest. All of
these are ultimately forms of taqlīd, even if they deploy systematic
reasoning to greater or lesser degrees.
The standard of true knowledge for Ghazālī remains strict. It
requires not only that one has no doubt in what one knows, but
also that doubt is altogether inconceivable (1980 p. 55). A
paradigmatic example he gives is our knowledge that ten is more
than three. A logical demonstration that can secure such a prize
must be perfectly valid, every premise proven, and its terms
clearly defined, removing any possibility of equivocation, ‘all the
way down’ to its certain foundations in the first principles,
themselves ultimately given by divine illumination, as he says
(1980 p. 57). The person whose knowledge of things is compre-
hensively of this nature (that is whose entire belief system is a
knowledge system on this standard) is exceedingly rare.
Conversely, Ghazālī’s standard for true belief does not require
true knowledge. It requires only sincere assent to the fundamental
principles of Islam, with a basic understanding of their meaning.
One need not be able to offer systematic proofs.
The exact extent to which these developments in his
epistemology were a result of Ghazālī’s engagement with the
falāsifah is an interesting question, but one we will not pursue
here. In the Tahāfut itself, we find him deploying elements of their
epistemic framework in the course of his argument against them.
We see it already here, in his description of this group of
apostates, as ‘deceived by embellished imaginings (khayālāt).’
This alludes to the influence of the epistemology of the falāsifah
on Ghazālī’s keen sensitivity to the prevalence of subtle forms of
taqlīd on belief-formation, in even the most rigorous thinkers. To
appreciate this influence, we briefly review some relevant aspects
of the epistemic framework of the falāsifah, in comparison to that
of the mutakallimūn. This is the framework developed by Fārābī,
based on Aristotle with a touch of Plotinus.
10 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

Like that of the mutakallimūn, this framework is also centered

on an ethical objective, but whereas for the mutakallimūn the
purpose of knowledge was to attain true belief, for Fārābī it was
to achieve happiness, conceived as a comprehensive perfection of
four types of virtues: theoretical, reflective, ethical, and political.
The theoretical is the basis of all the others, and encompasses
‘those sciences whose ultimate aim is to gain knowledge of
existing entities as intelligibles only’ (Fakhry, 2002 p. 92). These
divide into the primary and the acquired, where the latter are
acquired through valid inferences from the former, which are
certain and self-evident.
True knowledge being the knowledge of the causes of things,
the highest knowledge is the knowledge of the First Cause of all
things, it being the noblest object of knowledge. The human soul
is uniquely suited for this in virtue of its capacity to grasp pure
intelligibles; that is the rational soul, which stands at the top of a
hierarchy of faculties. These are the nutritive, desiderative,
sensible, imaginative, and rational. The last three are directly
relevant to our present purposes. The sensible faculty (which we
share with animals) is the principle of our capacity to perceive
particular material objects through the five senses. Only the
rational soul is capable of grasping the pure intelligibles necessary
for arriving at real knowledge of things, and ultimately of the First
Cause of all things. This, then, is an upward process ascending
from the senses and material things, through their intelligible
forms, eventually culminating in a union or connection with the
Active Intellect, understood as an emanation from the First Cause
that bestows the intelligible forms (and thus reality, order, and
intelligibility) to the objects of the material world.
The imaginative faculty plays a mediating role between the
sensible and rational. Its lowest function is to enable us to retain
sensible images in the mind, recall them, and modify them
(separate, combine, etc.) at will. On the other side, imagination
enables us to form sensible representations of abstract ideas. In this
capacity, it has a tendency to deceive, leading us to believe that if
something is true of the sensible representation it must therefore
be true of the thing itself, for example, or by leading us to form
associations between images that we mistakenly take for logical
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 11

connections between things themselves. Fārābī understood a

prophet, in brief, as a philosopher whose soul is not only connected
to the Active Intellect (and thus able to grasp the intelligible forms
of all things), but also endowed with a uniquely powerful
imagination, by means of which he is able to express these abstract
realities in symbolic forms with optimal accuracy and effectiveness.
By this means, he communicates them to other human beings, the
vast majority whom are not able to rise above the sensible and
imaginative in their understanding of things (Rahman, 1958).
The prophet has such a role precisely because human beings,
by nature or circumstance, are disparately endowed with regard
to their epistemic faculties and secondly, because happiness is a
collective pursuit, man being not only a rational but also a social
animal as Aristotle taught. Attaining human happiness therefore
requires a social and political order modeled in such a way that
the truth of things is impressed in the souls of its members, at
whichever level they are capable of grasping it. ‘True religion’,
then, is a system of symbols and practices engineered to bring the
masses of society to as close an understanding of the truth as they
are able.
To each class there is a corresponding form of discourse
arranged hierarchically. The vast majority are limited to that of
rhetoric, capable of being moved to assent to the truth through
persuasive and imaginative means. Only the philosophers,
properly trained and naturally endowed, are capable of engaging
in genuine logical demonstration, the only means by which one
acquires true knowledge. Between the philosophers and the
masses, however, is a third class who engage in rational argu-
mentation and the interpretation of the public religious symbols,
and yet are incapable of fully grasping the philosophical truth
behind them. These are the mutakallimūn.
Their level of discourse is that of dialectic; that is, they are
capable of rational inference and argument, yet their reasoning
does not start from a grasp of first principles but merely from
premises that are common belief or conjured in the imagination.
In comparison to true philosophers, they are mere imitators. Their
proper role in a well-ordered society is therefore to defend the
public religion against sophistical challenges that might upset the
12 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

public order. They must, however, be carefully regulated lest they

step out of bounds thereby posing such a threat themselves,
through ungrounded speculative attempts at interpretation.
Ghazālī himself holds the mutakallimūn (or at least the vast
majority of them) in a similar status – able to engage in rational
argument, yet falling short of certain knowledge by virtue of the
subtle forms of taqlīd that shape their thought. Like Fārābī, he
says their proper role is to defend orthodoxy in the public sphere.
‘But in so doing they relied on premises which they took over
from their adversaries,’ he reports ‘being compelled to admit
them either by uncritical acceptance, or because of the
Community’s consensus, or by simple acceptance deriving from
the Qur’ān and the Traditions’ (1980 p. 59). Their level of dis-
course is thus dialectical, according to Ghazālī, just as Fārābī had
assessed it. Only after some development, he explains, their effort
to defend the creed led them to study the ‘true natures of
things…substances, accidents, and their principles,’ but ‘since
that was not the aim of their own science, their discussion of the
subject was not thoroughgoing.’ Consequently, he concedes that
kalām has been effective for some, ‘but in a way vitiated by servile
conformism (taqlīd) in some matters which are not among the
primary truths’ (1980 p. 60).
The epistemic position of the philosophical posers he
describes in Tahāfut corresponds to this description of the
mutakallimūn. The key difference is that while the mutakallimūn
are in some degree or another of uncritical abeyance to the
postulates of their respective schools, these philosophy posers are
in abeyance to exaggerated profiles of famous falāsifah, and ideas
they do not clearly understand. Functionally speaking, they are
the mutakallimūn ‘gone rogue’ as described in the socio-epistemic
model of the falāsifah we summarized, above. They exhibit the
same epistemic abilities and liabilities and consequently pose the
same threat to the public order by openly questioning the
narrative and practice of the public religion, placing themselves
above it and declaring it a merely symbolic representation for the
consumption of the masses.
If Ghazālī had fully agreed with Fārābī’s political philosophy,
he would have written a book just like the Tahāfut to deal with
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 13

this public menace, even if it meant publicly opposing that very

philosophy. That book, on the other hand, may have differed in
an important respect. For the aim of the actual Tahāfut is to help
the posers become more philosophical about philosophy, and less
religious about it; that is, if we take him at his word.
When I perceived the vein of folly throbbing within these
dimwits, I took it upon myself to write this book in refutation
of the ancient philosophers to show the incoherence of their
belief and the contradiction of their word in matters relating
to metaphysics; to uncover the dangers of their doctrine and
its shortcomings, which in truth ascertainable are objects of
laughter for the rational and a lesson for the intelligent…
(2000 p. 3).

Read in the spirit of philosophy, this passage reflects a deep

respect for the ancient philosophers. For the proper way to engage
philosophy is critically, and as every philosophy teacher knows,
motivating students to do so often requires refuting and even
ridiculing precisely those philosophers one holds in the highest
esteem, and whose ideas, therefore, are most deserving of critical
engagement. Any student who comes away from philosophy class
with nothing more than the belief that Socrates was a wise and
good man whom we should emulate has simply failed philosophy.
What Ghazālī has promised to do here with the ancient
philosophers is just what any good philosophy teacher would do.
It is an approach that seeks to empower rather than overpower the
‘philosophical posers’ for whom he is writing, since it would
involve clearly laying out the arguments and allowing them to
examine the matter themselves. Of course, whether he has
succeeded in this regard depends on whether his critique is logical
and penetrating (not necessarily whether he is right). It also
depends on whether his accounts of the arguments and positions
of the falāsifah are accurate.
This he also promises, but for an additional reason. He will
be ‘relating at the same time their doctrine as it actually is,’ he
writes, ‘so as to make it clear to those who embrace unbelief
through imitation that all significant thinkers, past and present,
agree in believing in God and the last day; that their differences
reduce to matters of detail extraneous to those two pivotal points’
14 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

(2000 p. 3). For according to Ghazālī the leading philosophers are

‘innocent of the imputation that they deny the religious
laws…they believe in God and His Messengers; but that they have
fallen into confusion in certain details beyond these principles’
(2000 p. 3).
This interesting claim raises the question, who are these
‘leading philosophers’ who supposedly all believe in God and His
Messengers? They are Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā, effectively. For as
Ghazālī specifies in his next introduction, he will be confining
himself here to the refutation of these two. The reason, he says,
is that they are ‘the most reliable transmitters and verifiers among
the philosophers of Islam’ of the system of Aristotle, considered
by the falāsifah generally (and apparently also by Ghazālī) as
‘their leader, who is the philosopher par excellence and ‘the first
teacher’ (2000 p. 4). Apparently, then, it is not the true falāsifah,
but only the posers who, failing to actually understand the
falāsifah abandon religion out of a misguided attempt to imitate
them.
Yet as Frank Griffel notes, there is an apparent contradiction
on this point (Griffel 2005). For in the conclusion of this same
book, Ghazālī charges the falāsifah with unbelief (kufr) on three
counts: their assertion that the world is eternal, their denial that
God knows particulars, and their denial of bodily resurrection. In
fact, that makes two apparent contradictions. One is simply over
whether the falāsifah are guilty of unbelief. The other is over the
criteria for that verdict. What does ‘belief’ consist of in this
context? For as we saw, in the preface Ghazālī implies that the
two fundamental principles of religion (which the leading
falāsifah allegedly hold to) are belief in God and the last day,
whereas now, he seems to imply that belief requires three
different views.
The second contradiction can be resolved. For each of the
three positions labelled in the conclusion as unbelief, according
to Ghazālī, entails the denial of one of the two requisites specified
in the introduction. In Discussion 4, he argues that though the
falāsifah claim to have proved the existence of the world’s
Creator, their position that the world is eternal actually precludes
its having a Creator (2000 p. 78). In Discussion 13, he argues that
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 15

the denial that God knows particulars ‘uprooted religious laws in

their entirety,’ since it entails that He cannot judge individuals
(2000 p. 136). Consequently, this precludes belief in the last day,
understood as the Day of Judgment, as does the denial of bodily
resurrection inasmuch as the Qu’ran describes the Day of
Judgment as involving just that. In Discussion 19, Ghazālī argues
that, since the impossibility of bodily resurrection is not logically
demonstrable, it is impermissible to interpret these descriptions
figuratively (2000 p. 214). Yet in the conclusion, he justifies his
verdict on all three only by the following. ‘The one who believes
them believes that the prophets utter falsehoods and that they
said whatever they have said by way of [promoting common]
utility, to give examples and explanation to the multitudes of
created mankind’ (2000 p. 226).
That leaves the other contradiction: are the falāsifah
unbelievers or not? The falāsifah, at least as Ghazālī will represent
them, do not agree that the three problematic positions entail
denying either of Ghazālī’s two requisites of belief. They think
these three positions are consistent with belief in God and the last
day. If, as is reasonable, one distinguishes the explicit denial of one
of the requisites, on the one hand, from merely holding positions
that, in spite of oneself, entail their denial, then we could reconcile
the contradiction. We could say that while the falāsifah themselves
do not deny the requisites, their three problematic positions,
according to Ghazālī, entail such a denial. In that case, however,
he should have merely described the three positions as entailing
unbelief. Unfortunately, however, he leveled the charge against the
falāsifah themselves. Thus, the contradiction between his first
introduction and his conclusion remains.
As for the conclusion, it is very brief and reads like a rather
unenthusiastic response to what Ghazālī might have anticipated as
an inevitable question: ‘do you then say conclusively that they are
infidels and that the killing of those who uphold their belief is
obligatory?’ Ghazālī’s answer is that ‘pronouncing them infidels is
necessary in three questions’ (2000 p. 226). He does not seem
enthusiastic here. Arriving at a legal judgment on the falāsifah is
not one of the objectives he laid out in the introduction, but it is
16 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

reasonable to presume that many of the interested parties were

more interested in legality than philosophy.
For whatever reason he felt obliged to include a legal verdict
here, he would have had to make such a verdict in light of existing
law, and not philosophy. In the introduction, he said he would
verify to the self-styled followers of the falāsifah that their leaders
are innocent of unbelief. He did not say he would verify this to
anyone else. It seems that Ghazālī wrote the conclusion for a
different sort of audience, whom he addresses only reluctantly.
‘We, however, prefer not to plunge into [the questions] of
pronouncing those who uphold heretical innovation to be infidels
and of which pronouncement is valid and which is not, lest the
discourse should stray from the objective of this book’ (2000 p.
227).
At the risk of straying from the objective of this book, I
suggest that the most plausible way of explaining this
contradiction is to see it from the view of the falāsifah themselves.
For the problem of ‘philosophical posers’, as alluded above, was
known to them. Proper philosophical education in Fārābī’s utopia
is only for the intellectual elite. For the common folk, only
education through persuasive methods is appropriate. In stark
contrast with the ʾAshʿarī aspiration, then, taṣdiq is only for the
few. For the rest, its taqlīd, not to the falāsifah themselves but,
interestingly enough, to public religion.
For Fārābī, again, true public religion is the ‘imitation of
philosophy’, a symbolic scheme of images and practices
engineered by a prophet (who is a philosopher with a powerful
imagination and rhetorical skill), in order to bring the masses of
society in line with philosophical truths that are beyond their
ability to comprehend on their own terms. Hence, Ghazālī’s
description of their claim, that the prophets ‘said whatever they
have said by way of utility, to give examples and explanation to
the multitudes of created mankind.’ Yet if the multitudes were to
see it that way, it would defeat the virtuous purpose of the whole
façade.
Thus, no true faylasūf would publicize this truth. The Imam
/ Philosopher King would have to deal with any pretenders who
try. Ghazālī, then, does not differ from the falāsifah in what he
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 17

sees as the problem posed by philosophical posers. For both, it is

the threat to public religion. If they differ here, it would not be
on whether the doctrine should be suppressed or not, but only on
why it should. Perhaps for Ghazālī we should suppress it because
it is false. For Fārābī we should suppress it precisely because it is
true. Thus, the public response of his Imam would bear the same
contradiction we see Ghazālī appearing to make here. He would
declare the falāsifah believers in one context and condemn them
as unbelievers in another.
If this also explains Ghazālī’s apparent contradiction here,
then it follows that, even though he did not think these doctrines,
properly understood, constitute unbelief, it was nevertheless in
the public interest for common people to view it as such. That of
course does not mean that he secretly agreed with these three
doctrines. He may disagree with them without believing that they
constitute unbelief, properly understood. It simply means he
thought a certain class of people are better off thinking these
doctrines constitute unbelief (because their inevitably mistaken
conception of the doctrines would in fact constitute unbelief), and
yet another group (who can properly understand them) are better
off knowing that they do not. He wrote this book for the latter
group who, if able follow the line of argument, would also be able
to understand why the verdict in the conclusion is necessary. That
may not explain the contradiction; but if not, I know nothing else
to say other than that he changed his mind in the process of
writing and neglected to re-write his preface.

SECTION 1.2. GHAZĀLĪ’S METHOD AND PARAMETERS

Perhaps the falāsifah would deal with philosophical posers by
trying to convince them that, by either nature or lack of
education, they are incapable of independent thought and so
should (so to speak) go back to their day jobs. A weakness of that
approach is that the poser can just as easily throw the same line
back, claiming that his critic is the one out of his depth. Who then
is the real philosopher, and who is the poser? In his fourth
introduction, Ghazālī mentions this tactic, as a way either the
falāsifah – or their posers – try to shield their arguments from
scrutiny.
18 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

One of the tricks these [philosophers (?)] use in enticing

[people] when confronted with a difficulty in the course of an
argument is to say: ‘These metaphysical sciences are obscure
and hidden, being the most difficult of the sciences for
intelligent minds. One can only arrive at knowing the answer
to these difficulties through the introduction of mathematics
and logic.’ Thus, whoever imitates them in their unbelief
when confronted with a difficulty in their doctrine would
think well of them and say: ‘No doubt their sciences include a
resolution of [this difficulty]; but it is difficult for me to
apprehend it, since I have neither mastered logic nor attained
mathematics’ (2000 p. 8).

To whom is Ghazālī referring here, as using the ‘trick’: the faylasūf

or the poser? Marmura (from his translation above) appears to
assume the former, but the matter is as ambiguous as that of
whether they are unbelievers. His description of the second
speaker as the one who imitates might at first seem to imply that
the first speaker is one of the falāsifah whom the posers are
imitating, but that’s not necessarily so. For one imitator can
imitate another. Furthermore, the second speaker here is
described as imitating the first in their unbelief, so if we take
Ghazālī on his word in the preface above, that the true falāsifah
were not unbelievers, then the first speaker; that is, those who
play the ‘trick’, must be the posers. Likewise, if we apply Fārābī’s
standard, a true faylasūf would not be engaging in a metaphysical
debate with an unqualified person in the first place.
Whoever the ‘trickster’ is, Ghazālī summarily calls him out.
As for mathematics, he explains, its object is either discrete
quantity (arithmetic), or continuous quantity (geometry), neither
of which are relevant to metaphysics. As for arithmetic, he simply
dismisses as nonsense the claim that metaphysics requires it. As
for geometry, he associates it with investigating the shape and
structure of the cosmos (the number and arrangement of the
spheres and their movements). This, he claims, is also irrelevant
for metaphysics.
For this is as if someone were to say that the knowledge that
this house came to be through the work of a knowing, willing,
living builder, endowed with power, requires that one knows
that the house is either a hexagon or an octagon and that one
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 19

knows the number of its supporting frames and the number of

its bricks, which is raving, its falsity obvious; or that one does
not know that this onion is temporally originated unless he
knows the number of its layers and does not know that this
pomegranate is temporally originated unless he knows the
number of its seeds…’ (2000 p. 9).

This raises a question that we will have occasion to consider later.

The contention, essentially, is that natural science has no bearing
on metaphysics. The analogous metaphysical question, drawn
from the first example, would be whether the cosmos and its
contents came to be through the work of a knowing, willing,
powerful Creator. The apparent implication here is that we
cannot arrive at an answer to that question by inferring from what
we know about the natural structure of these things. This would
seem to preclude any teleological ‘design’ argument, premised on
observations of the order in that structure. Yet in other works,
Ghazālī does just that.
In his major theological text, al-Iqtisād fī al-I‘tiqād
(Moderation in Belief), he argues that, since the world is a well-
ordered act, and every well-ordered act proceeds from a knowing
and powerful agent, then the world proceeds from a knowing,
powerful agent. Part of the evidence he produces for the first
premise, moreover is based on the observation that the compart-
ments of a beehive are hexagonal and therefore optimal for fitting
the round shape of the bee without wasting space (2013 p. 91).
Knowing that a house is hexagonal may not be necessary for
knowing it had an intelligent designer, but knowing that a
beehive is hexagonal is apparently sufficient for knowing it did.
Unless we can know the world is a well-ordered act without
knowing anything about its natural structure, it is hard to see how
one can maintain that natural science has no connection to the
question of whether the world has a knowing, willing, powerful
Creator.
Logic, Ghazālī affirms, is a pre-requisite for metaphysics.
This raises another crucial question. Does Ghazālī here mean to
imply, positively, that we can arrive at metaphysical knowledge
through logic, or does he merely mean that logic is necessary for
systematically engaging in discussions of metaphysics? This is
20 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

important because the latter interpretation is compatible with the

position that metaphysical knowledge is not possible through the
exercise of ‘unaided reason’ at all. In either case, while affirming
that logic is necessary for metaphysics, Ghazālī emphasizes that
it is neither exclusive to the falāsifah, nor limited in its expression
to their technical terminology. Theologians and jurists also
understand and practice this discipline, albeit under a different
name. He will thus confine himself, he says, to the logical
terminology of the falāsifah, not only to avoid any semantic
obfuscation, but also in order to judge their arguments according
to their own rules.
We will make it plain that what they set down as a condition
for the truth of the matter of the syllogism in the part on
demonstrating [their] logic, and what they set forth as a
condition for its form in the book of the syllogism, and the
various things they posited in the Isagoge and the Categories
which are parts of logic and its preliminaries, [are things]
none of which they have been able to fulfill in their
metaphysical sciences (2000 p. 9).

Ghazālī promises to make it plain that the arguments the falāsifah

offer for their metaphysical claims have failed to meet their own
epistemic standards, but this requires that the reader understand
these standards. Thus, he included a primer on logic at the end of
the book. He also refers the reader to his Mi’yār al-‘ilm (‘Standard
of Knowledge’), a separate book on logic. Logic is ‘concerned with
examining the instrument of thought in intelligible things,’ he
explains, ‘there is no significant disagreement encountered in
these’ (2000 p. 11). In that case, we have a shared set of clearly
defined ‘ground rules’ for the debate. So long as Ghazālī’s
exposition of his opponents’ arguments is complete and accurate,
it should be a straightforward procedure to determine whether
they meet the standards of proof laid out by their own logic. If so,
then Ghazālī will have equipped the reader with the means to
judge the outcome of the debate for herself. What he promises is
empowering, respectful of the readers’ intellect, and genuinely
philosophical. It remains for us to evaluate the degree to which
he has fulfilled that promise.
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 21

Having clarified Ghazālī’s proposed methodology it remains

to review the parameters of the discussion, which he lays out in
the first three introductions. As we saw, for his purposes here, the
falāsifah are effectively al-Fārābī and Ibn Sīnā. For based on the
premise that they are the most reliable transmitters of Aristotle
among the Muslims, Ghazālī specifies that he will be limiting
himself to the review of their arguments. Ibn Rushd is often
critical of the reliability of that transmission (especially in the
case of Ibn Sīnā). Hence, we will often find him rejecting one of
their arguments as inconclusive, while disavowing it as not
representing the thought of the ‘ancient’ philosophers, while at
other times he cites the diversity of their views. In light of
Ghazālī’s specific claim (as expressed in the introductions), these
moves only seem to support his case. For Ghazālī explains the
limit of his scope of inquiry, by the very fact of this diversity of
views among the philosophers, recounting how Aristotle differed
even from his teacher, Plato. This difference, he says, is itself
proof for his position.
We have transmitted this story to let it be known that there is
neither firm foundation nor perfection in the doctrine they
hold; that they judge in terms of supposition (ẓann) and
surmise (takhmīn), without verification (taḥqīq) or certainty
(yaqīn); that they use the appearance of their mathematical
and logical sciences as evidential proof for the truth of their
metaphysical sciences, using [this] as a gradual enticement
for the weak in mind. Had their metaphysical sciences been
as perfect in their demonstration, free from conjecture, as
their mathematical, they would not have disagreed among
themselves regarding [the former], just as they have not
disagreed in their mathematical sciences (2000 p. 4).

This implies that the posers of Ghazālī’s ire had been claiming
that the falāsifah were capable of mathematical certainty in
questions of metaphysics, or at least a level of certainty that
should result in unanimity around a settled, monolithic doctrine.
Only then would the fact that they differed on metaphysical
questions constitute a refutation. Did the falāsifah themselves
claim as much; and if not, did they give their admirers any reason
to?
22 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

In the second introduction, Ghazālī divides disputes with the

falāsifah into three types: those that reduce to semantics,
substantial disputes that do not contradict any religious principle,
and those that do. Only the third sort, according to Ghazālī,
require objection. The example of the first category is the falāsifah
reference to God as a ‘substance’ (jawhar), understood as ‘self-
subsisting’. In the kalām milieu, this term referred to that which
occupies space. Thus, they would object to the notion that God is
a substance, since He does not occupy space. Yet the falāsifah and
the mutakallimūn both agree that God is self-subsistent and does
not occupy space. Thus the dispute, according to Ghazālī, is only
over the proper use of the term for God, which is a matter for
religious law. ‘You must not, however, allow the true nature of
things to become confused for you because of customs and
formalities,’ he writes, thus neatly categorizing the semantic as
‘conventional’ as distinct from the ‘natural’ (2000 p. 5). Yet the
question of just how to draw this line animates much of the
debate to come.
The example of the second category is the falāsifah
explanation of the eclipses. There is no purpose in disputing this,
says Ghazālī, because it does not contradict religious doctrine. In
fact, those who dispute it in the name of defending religion
actually harm religion. ‘For these matters rest on demonstrations
– geometrical and arithmetical – that leave no room for doubt,’
he writes, ‘Thus, when one who studies these demonstrations and
ascertains their proofs…is told that this is contrary to religion,
[such an individual] will not suspect this [science, but] only
religion’ (2000 p. 6). Then what if we find something demonstra-
tively proven that does contradict religion? In that case,
according to Ghazālī, we must interpret the religious text
figuratively.
The discussion here deserves careful attention. The first
thing Ghazālī does, is to consider an objection raised, on account
of a hadith narrating a description by the Prophet Muhammad of
the eclipses as God’s signs, where he denied that they happen
because of the birth or death of any person and commanded
people to pray if they see one. Nothing in this, Ghazālī says,
contradicts the explanation of the eclipses demonstrated by the
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 23

falāsifah. Understanding natural phenomenon as signs of God, we

may infer, is compatible with them also having natural
explanations. Note here Ghazālī’s opposition to any pretense to a
monopoly on the sources of knowledge by self-styled defenders of
religion.
One version of the hadīth in which this prophetic saying is
narrated concludes with the statement, ‘But, if God reveals
himself to a thing, it submits itself to Him.’ Ghazālī considers the
objection that with this addition the text does indeed contradict
the falāsifah explanation of the eclipses. The transmission of this
version, he argues, is unsound. ‘For if the transmission [of the
addition] were sound, then it would be easier to interpret it
metaphorically rather than to reject matters that are conclusively
true’ (2000 p. 7). There are many cases of metaphorical scriptural
interpretation (ta’wīl), he points out, to resolve contradictions
with things proven less decisively than the explanation of the
eclipses.
There are two important things to take from this. First, there
is the implied rule that when a scriptural text contradicts some-
thing demonstratively proven we should interpret the former
metaphorically. Secondly, there is the implication that the
statement, ‘if God reveals Himself to a thing, it submits (khaḍa‘a)
itself to Him,’ taken literally, is incompatible with a natural
explanation of the eclipses. It seems that Ghazālī takes the literal
sense of ‘submits’ here as pertaining to the natural. For he
proceeds to explain all this in terms of the same analogy he uses
above for the lack of relation between the natural and the
metaphysical.
This is because the inquiry [at issue] about the world is
whether it originated in time or is eternal. Moreover, once its
temporal origination is established, it makes no difference
whether it is a sphere, a simple body, an octagon, or a
hexagon; [it makes] no difference whether the [highest]
heavens and what is beneath are thirteen layers, as they say,
or lesser or greater. For the relation into [these matters] to the
inquiry into divine [matters] is similar to the relation of
looking at the number of layers of an onion [or] the number
of seeds in a pomegranate. What is intended here is only [the
world’s] being God’s act, whatever mode it has (2000 p. 7).
24 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

This seems to imply that in Ghazālī’s view the term ‘submits’,

applied literally to an object of nature, entails that some specific
physical description applies. Then when this physical description
contradicts another one the truth of which we can logically
demonstrate, we interpret the former as a metaphor for a
metaphysical truth. Since there is no relation between the
physical (e.g. the number of seeds in a pomegranate) and the
metaphysical (e.g. the contingency of the pomegranate) then a
logically demonstrated physical fact can never contradict a
metaphysical truth. As we noted above, it seems to follow
(problematically, perhaps) that a physical fact (or facts) can never
entail a metaphysical truth. Consequently, Ghazālī must
understand all non-negotiable religious principles as metaphysical
principles, and it is only in defense of these that he deems it
necessary to oppose the falāsifah.
The third part is one where the dispute pertains to one of the
principles of religion, such as upholding the doctrine of the
world’s origination, [or] demonstrating the resurrection of
bodies, all of which [the philosophers] have denied. It is in
this topic and its likes, not any other, that one must show the
falsity of their doctrine (2000 p. 7).

In the third introduction, Ghazālī announces that, since his

objective is only to dispel the image that the falāsifah are ‘free
from contradiction, by showing the [various] aspects of their
incoherence,’ he will not enter the argument ‘except as one who
demands and denies, not as one who claims [and] affirms’ (2000
p. 7). By this, he obviously intends to relieve himself of the
burden of proof with respect to any alternative doctrine. This is
generally valid. Showing that one theory suffers from internal
contradictions or inconclusive evidence does not itself require
positive proof that some alternative theory is true. At most, one
may question the value of such an exercise, as Ibn Rushd does.

SECTION 1.3. AN ‘IMPERFECT REFUTATION’

Ibn Rushd did not include Ghazālī’s introductions with the text
that he copied into his Tahāfut, nor does he address them. He
briefly states his objective in writing it before launching straight
into his review of the opening argument of Discussion 1. ‘The aim
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 25

of this book,’ he writes, ‘is to show the different degrees of assent

and conviction attained by the assertions in the Incoherence of the
Philosophers, and to prove that the greater part has not reached
the degree of evidence or truth’ (1930 p. 3 / 1954 p. 33). The first
argument he proceeds to criticize is, not Ghazālī’s, but the
falāsifah argument for the eternity of the world that Ghazālī
presents there. Though he does not reject its conclusion, the issue
for him (as for Ghazālī) is whether the argument in question is
demonstrative. Indeed, he is often as critical of the falāsifah
arguments Ghazālī presents as he is of the objections Ghazālī
raises against them. If we interpret his statement of intent
according to what he actually does, then we should conclude that
Ibn Rushd is not targeting only Ghazālī’s arguments, but all (or at
least most) of the arguments for any of the assertions made in the
Tahāfut, whether by or against the falāsifah.
Yet as we saw, Ghazālī explicitly says he will not be making
or defending any positive assertions. His aim is strictly to show
that the falāsifah are not able to prove with the demonstrative
certainty they claim, their own assertions on the twenty topics.
This does not require proof of any contrary assertion. Thus,
Ghazālī can conceivably succeed in his aim, even if all the
assertions he makes (or at least all the remotely controversial
ones) are unproven. Technically then, Ibn Rushd’s stated aim here
is not necessarily in opposition to that of Ghazālī, but actually in
accord with it. The two would be coherent in their objectives (or
at least, in their explicitly stated objectives). Ibn Rushd seems to
feel otherwise. This, among other features of his response raise
the question whether he was aware of Ghazālī’s introductions and
his stated purpose there. For example, he often targets ‘Ash‘ari
positions that Ghazālī does not commit himself to in the book, as
if that were relevant to the soundness of the falāsifah arguments
in question.
Here, we will explore some indications and implications of
Ibn Rushd’s apparent ignorance of Ghazālī’s introductions. Ibn
Rushd’s own minimal statement of purpose (to show the
arguments in the Tahāfut are undemonstrative) allows me the
space to proceed on the working hypothesis that he was
motivated by genuine philosophical concern for meeting the
26 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

challenge of the questions Ghazālī raised. So also does the fact

that, in his own writing, he does not generally reflect the same
degree of inordinate arrogance toward Ghazālī often displayed by
his modern partisans. There are, however, places in the body of
the work where Ibn Rushd provides more detail about his
objectives and method, of which we will review one key instance
here. On that basis, I will make a case for approaching the Tahāfut
debate as a philosophically productive dialectic of the sort
described by Fārābī in his Book of Letters.
In Ibn Rushd’s reproduction of the text, Ghazālī’s assertion
of a purely critical stance first appears – seemingly ad hoc in the
absence of his introduction – at the end of the first discussion.
There, the falāsifah note that Ghazālī has posed problems for their
argument ‘without solving any of the problematic [the
philosophers] have brought with them’ (2000 p. 46). He replies
that his objections have achieved their sole aim, which is not to
defend a specific doctrine but just to show that they have failed
to demonstrate the pre-eternity of the cosmos. He will defend the
true doctrine, he says, in a future book that he will name Qawā‘id
al-‘aqā’id, or ‘Principles of Belief’ (2000 p. 46).
As fate would have it, this is the title of a brief summary of
creed found in Ghazālī’s voluminous Iḥyā’‘ulūm al-dīn. Outside of
this chapter, the Iḥyā’ is rife with the influence of falsafah. It is
thus one of several works which some have argued indicate that
Ghazālī was an adherent of Ibn Sīnā’s doctrine, either secretly
(Gairdner, 1914, Abrahamov 1988) or openly (Frank 1992).
Others who argue instead that Ghazālī remained a committed
ʾAshʿarī, typically identify the Iqtisād fī al-I‘tiqād (‘Moderation in
Belief’), his most extensive defense of that school’s creed, as the
exposition of true doctrine Ghazālī promises in the Tahāfut
(Marmura 2004). Ibn Rushd himself raises this question.
But this book has not yet come into my hands and perhaps he
never composed it, and he only says that he does not base this
present book on any doctrine, in order that it should not be
thought that he based it on that of the ʾAshʿarīs. It appears
from the books ascribed to him that in metaphysics he recurs
to the philosophers. And of all his books this is most truly
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 27

proved in his book called The Niche of Lights (1930 p. 117 /

1954 p. 69).

I will here advance the working hypothesis that, as Ibn Rushd

suggests, Ghazālī never did compose his book of true doctrine.
This suits our present aim, which is not to ascertain what of
Ghazālī’s corpus reflects his heart of hearts, but rather to examine
his debate with the falāsifah as part of an active philosophical
exploration. We will assume that in his encounter with the
falāsifah he was searching, so that we might join the search, using
the debate as a platform for speculating, in a sense, over what the
content of his book of the final truth would be, were he to have
written it. We thus need not ponder here over whether the Iqtisād
expresses his true belief, whether he actually wrote Mishkāt al-
Anwār (‘Niche of Lights’) and so forth. For we do not intend to
use any of that to impose conclusive limits on where the argument
of the Tahāfut could lead us. It may be that problems remain with
the arguments of both the falāsifah and their opponents.
Ibn Rushd, it seems, would object to such a procedure. ‘To
oppose difficulty with difficulty does not bring about destruction,
but only perplexity and doubts in him who acts this way’ he says
of Ghazālī’s purely critical posture, ‘for why should he think one
of the two conflicting theories reasonable and the opposite one
vain?’ (1930 p. 116 / 1954 p. 68). Ibn Rushd apparently
understands Ghazālī’s objective here simply by the term
‘destruction’ (tahāfut), taken from the book’s title rather than its
introduction’s extensive statement of purpose (again, absent from
his own reproduction). He assumes that as an outcome, this
‘destruction’ of a theory entails the positive demonstration of an
opposing theory, and that simply showing that the arguments for
the theory are not demonstrative or even that the theory is
internally contradictory is for him not sufficient for that. This
requires a ‘perfect refutation.’
‘Most of the arguments with which this man Ghazālī opposes
the philosophers are doubts which arise when certain parts of the
doctrine of the philosophers come into conflict with others,’ he
informs us, again, as though he were unaware that Ghazālī had
clearly specified as much at the outset. ‘But this is an imperfect
refutation’ (1930 p. 116 / 1954 p. 68). A perfect refutation would
28 COHERENCE OF THE INCOHERENCE

be one that succeeded in showing the futility of their system

according to the facts themselves, not such a one as, for instance,
Ghazālī’s assumption that it is permissible for the opponents of
the philosophers to claim that possibility is a mental concept in
the same way as the philosophers claim this for the universal. For
if the truth of this comparison between the two were conceded, it
would not follow that it was untrue that possibility was a concept
dependent on reality, but only either that it is false that the
universal exists in the mind only, or false that possibility exists in
the mind only (1930 p. 116 /1954 pp. 68–9).
As we will see, the falāsifah argue here that since possibility
has a substrate in mind-independent reality, any hypothetical
beginning of the cosmos entails the prior existence of the cosmos,
since its prior possibility entails a pre-existing material substrate.
Comparing possibility to universals, which the falāsifah, following
Aristotle over Plato, claim exist only in the intellect (and
ultimately the Divine Intellect), Ghazālī objects that possibility
may also require no material substrate. The possibility of the
cosmos prior to its coming to be may simply subsist either in our
own estimative imagination or in God’s knowledge. As Ibn Rushd
points out, this does not prove positively that the falāsifah are
wrong, but only the possibility that they are. Yet that alone means
that their arguments fail to be demonstrative, which again as
Ghazālī specifies in his introduction, is all he has set out to do. It
therefore is a refutation of their system according to the ‘facts
themselves’ as Ibn Rushd put it, inasmuch as their system involves
the claim to have achieved demonstrative knowledge of these
matters while in fact it has not.
Had Ibn Rushd read Ghazālī’s introduction or taken it
seriously, we would expect him to address the crucial question
whether the ‘true’ falāsifah as he puts it (i.e. Aristotle as opposed
to Ibn Sīnā) really do, as Ghazālī represents them, claim
demonstrative metaphysical knowledge. We would also expect
him to comment directly on Ghazālī’s specification of Fārābī and
Ibn Sīnā as his sources and the most authentic transmitters of
Aristotle among the Muslims. He would also have had much to
say, for example, about Ghazālī’s denial of the relation between
physics and metaphysics and his denial that the falāsifah have a
 CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTIONS 29

monopoly over the mutakallimūn in logic. The fact that he did not
address these in a specific rejoinder to Ghazālī’s introduction
indicates that he did not have it available, and one wonders how
his approach to the book would have differed if he had.
Most intriguingly, one wonders how Ibn Rushd would have
responded to Ghazālī’s description of the problem of
philosophical ‘posers’ who are led astray from religion by
misunderstanding philosophy. For the problem Ibn Rushd has
with Ghazālī’s book is in fact that it will create philosophical
posers led astray from religion by a misunderstanding of
philosophy. ‘Indeed, it would have been necessary for him to
begin by establishing the truth before starting to perplex and
confuse his readers,’ he writes’ for they might die before they
could get hold of that book, or he might have died himself before
writing it’ (1930 p. 117 /1954 p. 69).
Conspicuously, this implies that the readers can be
untouched by ‘confusion’ prior to the ‘establishment’ of the truth.
Only then could Ghazālī have been responsible for confusing
them without its being already established. Thus by their
‘confusion,’ Ibn Rushd does not mean their ignorance, but their
awareness of their ignorance. This reflects Ibn Rushd’s own
iteration, expressed in his Faṣl al-maqāl, of Al-Fārābī’s social
hierarchy mentioned above, (2008 pp. 24–29). For the masses,
the antidote to ‘confusion’ is not knowledge, of which they are
incapable, but trust in and compliance with the public religion.
The proper way to promote that is to provide persuasive positive
arguments based as far as possible on a literal interpretation of
scripture. Simply raising points of doubt in the arguments of
heretics, as Ghazālī claims to be doing here, does not contribute
to confidence in the official creed, but rather the opposite. It
habituates the population to skepticism and questioning the law.
In this place, he specifically accuses Ghazālī of risking this
by having inserted scriptural interpretations into rhetorical or
dialectal books (2008 p. 26). It is not clear if he has the Tahāfut
in mind, for the points of doubt Ghazālī is raising here are not
against the public religion or apparent interpretation of scripture,
but rather against the claimed demonstrative nature of the
falāsifahs’ arguments for their supposedly ‘true interpretation’ of
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 In that crowning ploy of which I have still to tell, it was Alexander-
Jonita who played the leading part.
The Sheriff, being admonished for his slackness by his legal superiors,
and complained of by the reverend court of the Presbytery, resolved to
make a bold push for it, and at one blow to take final possession of kirk and
manse.
So he summoned the yeomanry of the province to meet him under arms
at the village of Causewayend, which stands near the famous and beautiful
loch of Carlinwark, on a certain day, under penalties of fine and
imprisonment. And about a hundred men on horseback, all well armed and
mounted, drew together on the day appointed. A fine breezy day in August,
it was—when many of them doubtless came with small good-will from
their corn-fields, where a winnowing wind searched the stooks till the ripe
grain rustled with the parched well-won sound that is music to the farmer’s
ear.
But if the news of gathering of the yeomanry had been spread by
summons, far more wide and impressive had been the counter call sent
throughout the parish of Balmaghie.
For farmer and cotter alike knew that matters had come to the perilous
pinch with us, and if it should be that the civil powers were not turned aside
now, all the past watching and sacrifice would prove in vain.
It was about noon when the sentinels reported that the Sheriff and his
hundred horsemen had crossed Dee water, and were advancing by rapid
stages.
Now it was Jonita’s plan to draw together the women also—for what
purpose we did not see. But since she had summoned them herself it was
not for any of us young men to say her nay.
So by the green roadside, a mile from the manse and kirk, Jonita had her
hundred and fifty or more women assembled, old and young, mothers of
families and wrinkled grandmothers thereof, young maidens with the
blushes on their cheeks and the snood yet unloosed about their hair.
Faith, spite of the grandmothers, many a lad of us would have desired to
be of that company that day! But Alexander-Jonita would have none of us.
We were to keep the castle, so she commanded, with gun and sword. We
were to sit in our trenches about the kirk, and let the women be our advance
guard.
 So when the trampling of horses was heard from the southward, and the
cavalcade came to the narrows of the way, “Halt!” cried Alexander-Jonita
suddenly. And leaping out of the thicket like a young roe of the mountains,
she seized the Sheriff’s bridle rein. At the same moment her hundred and
fifty women trooped out and stood ranked and silent right across the path of
the horsemen.
“What do ye here? Let go, besom!” cried the Sheriff.
“Go back to those that sent ye, Sheriff,” commanded Alexander-Jonita,
“for an’ ye will put out our minister, ye must ride over us and wet the feet of
your horses in our women’s blood.”
“Out upon you, lass! Let men do their work!” cried the Sheriff, who was
a jolly, rollicking man, and, moreover, as all knew, like most sheriffs, not
unkindly disposed to the sex.
“Leave you our minister alone to do his work. I warrant he will not
meddle with you,” answered Alexander-Jonita.
“Faith, but you are a well-plucked one!” cried the Sheriff, looking down
with admiration on her, “but now out of the way with you, for I must
forward with my work.”
“Sir,” said the lass, “ye may turn where ye are, and ride back whence ye
came, for we will by no means let you proceed one step nearer to the kirk of
Balmaghie this day!”
“Forward!” cried the Sheriff, loudly, to his men, thinking to intimidate
the women.
“Stand firm, lasses!” cried Alexander-Jonita, clinging to the Sheriff’s
bridle-rein.
And the company of yeomanry stood still, for, being mostly
householders and fathers of families, they could not bring themselves to
charge a company of women, as it might be their own wives and daughters.
“Forward!” cried the Sheriff again.
“Aye, forward, gallant cavaliers!” cried Alexander-Jonita, “forward, and
ye shall have great honour, Sheriff! More famous than my Lord
Marlborough shall be ye. Ride us down. Put your horses to their speed. Be
assured we will not flinch!”
Time and again the Sheriff tried, now threatening and now cajoling; but
equally to no purpose.
 At last he grew tired.
“This is a thankless job,” he said, turning him about; “let them send their
soldiers. I am not obliged to fight for it.”
And so with a “right about” and a wave of the hand he took his valiant
horsemen off by the way they came.
And as they went they say that many a youth turned him on his saddle to
cast a longing look upon Alexander-Jonita, who stood there tall and straight
in the place where she had so boldly confronted the Sheriff.
Then the women sang a psalm, while Alexander-Jonita, leaping on a
horse, rode a musket-shot behind the retiring force, till she had seen them
safely across the river at the fords of Glenlochar, and so finally out of the
parish bounds.
 CHAPTER XXIX.

THE ELDERS OF THE HILL FOLK.

(The Narrative taken up again by Quintin MacClellan.)

It was long before I could see clearly the way I should go, after that
dismal day and night of which I have told the tale.
It seemed as if there was no goodness on the earth, no use in my work,
no right or excellency in the battle I had fought and the sacrifice I had
made. Ought I not even now to give way? Surely God had not meant a man
so poor in spirit, so easily cast down to hold aloft the standard of his ancient
kirk.
But nevertheless, here before me and around me, a present duty, were
my parish and my poor folk, so brave and loyal and steadfast. Could I
forsake them? Daily I heard tidings of their struggling with the arm of flesh,
though I now judge that Hob, in some fear of my disapproval, would not
venture to tell me all.
Yet I misdoubted that I had brought my folk into a trouble which might
in the event prove a grievous enough one for them.
But a kind Providence watched over them and me. For even when it
came to the stormiest, the wind ceased and there was a blissful breathing
time of quietness and peace.
Also there was that happened about this time which brought us at least
for a time assurance and security within our borders.
It was, as I remember it, a gurly night in late September, the wind
coming in gusts and swirling flaws from every quarter, very evidently
blowing up for a storm.
Hob had come in silently and set him down by the fire. He was peeling a
willow wand for his basket-weaving and looking into the embers. I could
hear Martha Little, our sharp-tongued servant lass, clattering among her
pots and pans in the kitchen. As for me I was among my books, deep in
Greek, which to my shame I had been somewhat neglecting of late.
Suddenly there came a loud knocking at the outer door.
 I looked at my plaid hung up to dry, and bethought me who might be ill
and in want of my ministrations upon such a threatening night.
I could hear Martha go to the door, and the low murmur of voices
without.
Then the door of the chamber opened and I saw the faces and forms of
half-a-dozen men in the passage.
“It has come at last,” thought I, for I expected that it might be the Sheriff
and his men come to expel me from the kindly shelter of the manse. And
though I should have submitted, I knew well that there would be bloodshed
on the morrow among my poor folk.
But it turned out far otherwise.
The first who entered into the house-place was a tall, thin, darkish man,
with a white pallor of face and rigid fallen-in temples. His eyes were fiery
as burning coals, deep set under his bushy eyebrows. Following him came
Sir Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun and in the lee of his mighty form three
or four others—douce, grave, hodden-grey men every one of them, earnest
of eye and quiet of carriage.
Hob went out, unobserved as was his modest wont, and I motioned them
with courtesy and observance to such seats as my little study afforded.
As usual there were stools everywhere, with books upon them, and I
observed with what careful scrupulosity the men laid these upon the table
before sitting down. A Hebrew Bible lay open on the desk, and one after
another stooped over it with an eager look of reverence.
I waited for them to speak.
It was the tall dark man who first broke silence.
“Reverend sir,” he said, “what my name is, it skills me not to tell.
Enough that I am a man that has suffered much from the strivings of fleshly
thorns, from the persecutions of ungodly man. But now I am charged with a
mission and a message.
“You have been cast out of the Kirk for adherence to the ancient way.
Yet you have upheld in weakness and the frailty of mortal man the banner
of the older Covenant. You are not ignorant that there are still societies and
general meetings of the Suffering Remnant of men who have never
declined, as you yourself have done, from the plain way of conscience and
righteousness.
 “Yet the man doth not live who doeth good and sinneth not. So because
we desire a minister, we would offer you the strong sustaining hand.
Though you be not able at once to unite with us, nor for the present to take
upon you our strait and heavy testimony, yet because you have been faithful
to your lights we will stand by you and see that no man hinder or molest
you.”
And the others, beginning with Sir Alexander Gordon, said likewise,
“We will support you!”
Then I knew that these men were the leaders and elders among the Hill
Folk, and the ancient reverence to which I was born took hold on me. For I
had been brought up among them as a lad, and my mother had spoken to me
constantly of their great piety and abounding steadfastness in the day of
trouble. These were they who had never tangled themselves with any
entrapping engagements. They alone were no seceders, for they had never
entered any State Church.
With a great price had I obtained this freedom, but these men were free-
born.
“I thank you, sirs,” I answered, bowing my head. “I have indeed sought
to keep the Way, but I have erred so greatly in the past that I cannot hope to
guide my path aright for the future. But one thing I shall at least seek after,
and that is the glory of the great King, and the honour and independence of
the Kirk of God in Scotland, Covenanted and Suffering!”
The dark stern-faced man spoke again.
“You are not yet one of us. You have yet a far road to travel. But I, that
am old, see a vision. And one day you, Quintin MacClellan, shall serve
tables among us of the Covenant. I shall not see it with the eyes of flesh.
For even now my days are numbered, and the tale of them is brief.
Farewell! Be not afraid. The Seven Thousand will stand behind you. No
evil shall befall you here or otherwhere. The Seven Thousand have sworn it
—they have sworn it on the Holy Book, in the place of Martyrs and in the
House of Tears!”
And with that the six men went out through the door and were lost in the
darkness of the night. And the wind from the waste swept in and the lowe of
the candle flickered eerily as if they had been visitants from another world.
 CHAPTER XXX.

SILENCE IS GOLDEN.

It was not long after this that I found myself, almost against my will,
skirting the side of the long Loch of Ken, on the road to the Great House of
Earlstoun.
The lady of the Castle met me by the outer gate. When I came near her
she lifted up her hands like a prophetess.
“Three times have ye been warned! The Lord will not deal always gently
with you. It is ill to run with the hares and hunt with the hounds!”
“Mistress Gordon,” said I, “wherein have I now offended?” For indeed
there was no saying what cantrip she had taken into her head.
“How was it then,” she said, “that the talk went through the countryside
that ye were married to that lassie Jean Gemmell on her dying bed?”
“It is true,” said I, “but wherein was the sin?”
“Oh,” said she, “the sin was not in the marrying (though that was
doubtless a silly caper and the lass so near Dead’s door), but in being
married by a minister of the Kirk Established and uncovenanted.”
“But what else could I have done?” I hasted to make answer; “there are
none other in all Scotland. For the Hill Folk have never had an ordained
minister, since they took down James Renwick’s body from the gallows
tree, and wrapped him gently in swaddling clothes for his burial.”
“It is even true,” she said, “but I would have gone unmarried till my
dying day before I would have let an Erastian servant of Belial couple me.
But I forgat—’tis not long since you yourself escaped from that fold!”
So there she stood so long on the step of the door and argued concerning
the points of faith and doctrine without ever asking me in, that at last I grew
weary, and begged that she would permit me to sit and refresh me on the
step of the well-house, which was close at hand, even under the arch of the
gateway.
“Aye, surely, ye may that!” she made me answer, and again took up her
parable without further offer of hospitality.
 And even thus they found us, when Mary Gordon and her father returned
from the hill, walking hand in hand as was their wont.
“Wi’ Janet, woman!” cried hearty Alexander, “what ails you at the
minister that ye have set him down there by the waters o’ Babylon like a
pelican in the wilderness? Could ye no hae asked the laddie ben and gied
him bite and sup? Come, lad,” cried he, reaching me a hand, “step up wi’
me—there’s brandy in the cupboard as auld as yoursel’!”
But as for me I had thought of nothing but the look in Mary Gordon’s
eyes.
“Brandy!” cried Jean Hamilton. “Alexander, think shame—you that are
an elder and have likewise been privileged to be a sufferer for the cause of
truth, to be speaking about French brandy at this hour o’ the day. Do ye not
see that I have been refreshing the soul of this poor, weak, downcast brother
with appropriate meditations from my own spiritual diary and
covenantings?”
She took again a little closely-written book from her swinging side-
pocket.
“Let me see, we were, I think, at the third section, and the——”
“Lord help us—I’m awa!” cried Sandy Gordon suddenly, and vanished
up the turnpike stair. Mary Gordon held out her hand to me in silence,
permitted her eyes to rest a moment on mine in calm and friendly fashion,
all without anger or embarrassment, and then softly withdrawing her hand
she followed her father up the stairs.
I was again left alone with the Lady of Earlstoun.
“ ‘Tis a terrible cross that I must bear,” said that lugubrious professor,
shaking her head, “in that my man hath not the inborn grace of my brother
—ah—that proven testifier, that most savoury professor, Sir Robert
Hamilton. For our Sandy is a man that cannot stand prosperity and the quiet
of the bieldy bush. In time of peace he becomes like a rusty horologe. He
needs affliction and the evil day, that his wheels may be taken to pieces,
oiled with the oil of mourning, washed with tears of bitterness, and then set
up anew. Then for a while he goes on not that ill.”
“Your husband has come through great trials!” I said. For indeed I scarce
knew what to say to such a woman.
 “Sandy—O aye!” cried his wife. “But what are his trials to the ills which
I have endured with none to pity? Have not I suffered his carnal doings
well-nigh thirty years and held my peace? Have I not wandered by the burn-
side and mourned for his sin? And now, worse than all, my children seek
after their father’s ways.”
“Janet Hamilton,” cried a great voice from a window of the tower, “is
there no dinner to be gotten this day in the house of Earlstoun?”
The lady lifted up her hands in holy horror.
“Dinner, dinner—is this a time to be thinking aboot eating and drinking,
when the land is full of ravening and wickedness, and when iniquity sits
unashamed in high places?”
“Never ye heed fash your thumb about the high places, Janet my
woman,” cried her husband from the window, out of which his burly, jovial
head protruded. “E’en come your ways in, my denty, and turn the weelgaun
mill-happer o’ your tongue on yon lazy, guid-for-nae-thing besoms in the
kitchen. Then the high places will never steer ye, and ye will hae a stronger
stomach to wrestle wi’ the rest o’ the sins o’ the times!”
“Sandy, Sandy, ye were ever by nature a mocker! I fear ye have been
looking upon the strong drink!”
“Faith, lass,” replied her husband, with the utmost good humour, “I was
e’en looking for it—but the plague o’ muckle o’t there is to be seen.”
The Lady of Earlstoun arose forthwith and went into the tall tower, from
the lower stories of which her voice, raised in flyting and contumelious
discourse, could be distinctly heard.
“Ungrateful madams,” so she addressed her subordinates, “get about
your business! Hear ye not that the Laird is quarrelling for his dinner, which
ought to have been served half-an-hour ago by the clock!
“Nay, tell me not that I keeped you so long at the taking of the Book that
there was no time left for the kirning of the butter. Never ought is lost by
the service of the Lord.”
Thus I sat on the well kerb, listening to the poor wenches getting, as the
saw hath it, their kail through the reek. But at that moment I observed
Sandy Gordon’s head look through the open window. He beckoned me to
him with his finger in a cunning manner. I went up the stairs with intent to
find the room where he was, but by a curious mischance I alighted instead
on the long oaken chamber where I had been entertained of yore by
Mistress Mary.
I found her there again, busy with the ordering of the table, setting out
platters and silver of price, the like of which I had never seen, save as it
might be in the house of the Laird of Girthon.
“Come your ways in, sir,” she said, briskly, “and help me with my
work.”
This I had been very glad to do, but that I knew her father was waiting
for me above.
“Right willingly,” said I, “but Earlstoun himself desires my presence
aloft in his chamber.”
She gave her shoulders a dainty little shrug in the foreign manner she
had learned from her cousin Kate of Lochinvar.
“I think,” she said, “that the job at which ye would find my father can be
managed without your assistance.”
So in the great chamber I abode very gratefully. And with the best will in
the world I set myself to the fetching and carrying of dishes, the spreading
of table-cloths fine as the driven snow. And all the time my heart beat fast
within me. For I had never before been so near this maid of the great folk,
nor so much as touched the robe that rustled about her, sweet and dainty.
And I do not deny (surely I may write it here) that the doing of these
things afforded me many thrills of heart, the like of which I have not
experienced ofttimes even on other and higher occasions.
And as I helped the Lady Mary, or pretended to help her rather, she
continued to converse sweetly and comfortably to me. But all as it had been
my sister Anna speaking—a thousand miles from any thought of love. Her
eyes beneath the long dark lashes remained cool and quiet.
“I am glad,” she said, “that ye have played the man, and withstood your
enemies even to the last extremity.”
“I could do no other,” I made answer.
“There are very many who could very well have ‘done other’ without
stressing themselves,” she said.
And I well knew that she meant Mr. Boyd, who was the neighbouring
minister and a recreant from the Societies.
 Then she looked very carefully to the ordering of certain wild flowers,
which like a bairn she had been out gathering, and had now set forth in
sundry flat dishes in the table-midst, in a fashion I had never seen before.
More than once she spilled a little of the water upon the cloth, and cried out
upon herself for her stupidity in the doing of it, discovering ever fresh
delights in the delicate grace of her movements, the swinging of her dress,
and in especial a pretty quick way she had of jerking back her head to see if
she had gotten the colour and ordering of the flowers to her mind.
This I minded for long after, and even now it comes so fresh before me
that I can see her at it now.
“I heard of the young lass of Drumglass and her love for you,” she said
presently, very softly, and without looking at me, fingering at the flowers in
the shallow basins and pulling them this way and that.
I did not answer, but stood looking at her with my head hanging down,
and a mighty weight about my heart.
“You must have loved her greatly?” she said, still more softly.
“I married her,” said I, curtly. But in a moment was ashamed of the
answer. Yet what more could I say with truth? But I had the grace to add,
“Almost I was heartbroken for her death.”
“She was happy when she died, they said,” she went on, tentatively.
“She died with her hand in mine,” I answered, steadily, “and when she
could not speak any longer she still pressed it.”
“Ah! that is the true love which can make even death sweet,” she said. “I
should like to plant Lads’ Love and None-so-pretty upon her grave.”
Yet all the while I desired to tell her of my love for herself, and how the
other was not even a heat of the blood, but only for the comforting of a
dying girl.
Nevertheless I could not at that time. For it seemed a dishonourable
word to speak of one who was so lately dead, and, in name and for an hour
at least, had been my wife.
Then all too soon we heard the noise of Sandy her father upon the garret
stair, trampling down with his great boots as if he would bring the whole
wood-work of the building with him bodily.
Mary Gordon heard it, too, for she came hastily about to the end of the
table where I had stood transfixed all the time she was speaking of Jean
Gemmell.
She set a dish on the cloth, and as she brought her hand back she laid it
on mine quickly, and, looking up with such a warm light of gracious
wisdom and approval in her eyes that my heart was like water within me,
she said: “Quintin, you are a truer man than I thought. I love your silences
better than your speeches.”
And at her words my heart gave a great bound within me, for I thought
that at last she understood. Then she passed away, and became even more
cold and distant than before, not even bidding me farewell when I took my
departure. But as I went down the loaning with her father she looked out of
the turret window, and waved the hand that had lain for an instant upon
mine.
 CHAPTER XXXI.

THE FALL OF EARLSTOUN.

It was toward the mellow end of August that there came a sough of
things terrible wafted down the fair glen of the Kens, a sough which neither
lost in volume nor in bitterness when it turned into the wider strath of the
Dee.
It arrived in time at the Manse of Balmaghie, as all things are sure to
turn manseward ere a day pass in the land of Galloway.
One evening in the quiet space between the end of hay and the first
sickle-sweep of harvest, Hob came in with more than his ordinary solemn
staidness.
But he said nothing till we were over with the taking of the Book and
ready to go to bed. Then as he was winding the watch I had brought him
from Edinburgh he glanced up once at me.
“When ye were last at Earlstoun,” he said, “heard ye any news?”
I thought he meant at first that Mary was to be married, and it may be
that my face showed too clearly the anxiety of the heart.
“About Sandy himself?” he hastened to add.
“About Alexander Gordon?” cried I in astonishment. “What ill news
would I hear about Alexander Gordon of Earlstoun?”
He nodded, finished the winding of his horologe, held it gravely to his
ear to assure himself that it was going, and then nodded again. For that was
Hob’s way.
“Well,” he said, “the Presbytery have had him complained of to them for
drunkenness and worse. And they will excommunicate him with the greatest
excommunication if he decline their authority.”
“But Earlstoun is not of their communion,” I cried, much astonished, the
matter being none of the Presbytery’s business; “he is of the Hill-folk, an
elder and mainstay among them for thirty years.”
“The Presbytery have made it their business because he is a well-wisher
of yours,” said Hob. “Besides, the report of it has already gone abroad
throughout the land, and they say that the matter will be brought before the
next general meeting of the societies.”
“And in the meantime?” I began.
“In the meantime,” said Hob, “those of the Hill-folk who form the
Committee of the Seven Thousand have suspended him from his eldership!”
Hob paused, as he ever did when he had more to tell, and was
considering how to begin.
“Go on, Hob,” cried I—testily enough, I fear.
“They say that his old seizure has come again upon him. He sits in an
upper room like a beast, and will be approached by none. And some declare
that, like King David, he feigns madness, others that he has been driven
mad by the sin and the shame.”
Now this was sore and grievous tidings to me, not only because of Mary
Gordon, but for the sake of the cause.
For Alexander Gordon had been during a generation the most noted
Covenanter of the stalwart sort in Scotland. He had suffered almost unto
death without wavering in the old ill times of Charles and James. He had
languished long in prison, both in the Castle of Edinburgh and that of
Blackness. He had come to the first frosting of the hair with a name clear
and untainted. And now when he stood at the head of the Covenanting
remnant it was like the downfall of a god that he should so decline from his
place and pride.
Then the other part of the news that the Presbytery, as the representatives
and custodians of morals, were to lay upon him the Greater
Excommunication was also a thing hard and bitter. For if they did so it
inferred the penalties of being shut off from communion with man in the
market-place and with God in the closet. The man who spoke to the
excommunicated partook of the crime. And though the power of the
Presbytery to loose and to bind had somewhat declined of late, yet,
nevertheless, the terror of the major anathema still pressed heavily upon the
people.
Hob went soberly up to his bedroom. The boards creaked as he threw
himself down, and I could hear him fall quiet in a minute. But sleep would
not come to my eyelids. At last I arose from my naked bed and took my
way down to the water-side by which I had walked oftentimes in dark days
and darker nights.
 Then as I was able I put before Him who is never absent the case of
Alexander Gordon. And I wrestled long as to what I should do. Sometimes I
thought of him as my friend, and again I knew that it was chiefly for the
sake of Mary Gordon that I was thus greatly troubled.
But with the dawning of the morning came some rest and a growing
clearness of purpose—such as always comes to the soul of man when, out
of the indefinite turmoil of perplexity, something to be done swims up from
the gulf and stands clear before the inward eye.
I would go to Earlstoun and have speech with Alexander Gordon. The
Presbytery had condemned him unheard. His own folk of the Societies—at
least, some of the elders of them—had been ready to believe an evil report
and had suspended him from his office. He needed a minister’s dealing, or
at least a friend’s advice. I was both, and there was all the more reason
because I was neither of the Kirk that had condemned nor of the
communion which was ready to believe an ill report of its noblest and
highest.
It was little past the dawning when, being still sleepless, I set my hat on
my head, and, taking staff in hand, set off up the wet meadow-edges to walk
to Earlstoun. I heard the black-cap sing sweetly down among the gall-
bushes of the meadow. A blackbird turned up some notes of his morning
song, but drowsily, and without the young ardour of spring and the rathe
summer time. Suddenly the east brightened and rent. The day strode over
the land.
I journeyed on, the sun beating hotly upon me. It was very evidently to
be a day of fervent heat. Soon I had to take off my coat, and as I carried it
country fashion over my shoulder the harvesters gave me good-day from
the cornfields of the pleasant strath of the ken, and over the hated park-
dykes which the landlords were beginning to build.
Mostly when I walked abroad I observed nothing, but to-day I saw
everything with strange clearness, as one sometimes does in a vision or
when stricken with fever.
I noted how the red willow-herb grew among the river stones and set fire
to little pebbly islands. The lilies, yellow and white, basked and winked
belated on the still and glowing water. The cattle, both nolt and kye, stood
knee-deep in the shallows—to me the sweetest and most summersome of all
rural sights.
 As I drew near to New Galloway a score of laddies squattered like ducks
and squabbled like shrill scolding blackbirds in and out of the water, or
darted naked through the copsewood at the loch’s head, playing “hide-and-
seek” about the tree-trunks.
And through all pulsed the thought, “What shall I say to my friend?
Shall I be faithful in questioning, faithful in chastening and rebuke? Shall I
take part with Mary Gordon’s father, and for her sake stand and fall with
him? Or are my message and my Master more to me than any earthly
love?” I feared the human was indeed mightier in my heart of hearts.
Nevertheless something seemed to arise within me greater than myself.
 CHAPTER XXXII.

LOVE OR DUTY.

I passed by the little Clachan of St. John’s Town of Dalry, leaving it

stretching away up the braeface on my right hand. A little way beyond the
kirk I struck into the fringing woods of Earlstoun which, like an army of
train-bands in Lincoln green, beset the grey tower.
I was on the walk along which I had once before come with her. The
water alternately gloomed and sparkled beneath. The fish sulked and waved
lazy tails, anchored in the water-swirls below the falls, their heads steady to
the stream as the needle to the pole.
The green of summer was yet untouched by autumn frosts, save for a
russet hair or two on the outmost plumes of the birks that wept above the
stream.
Suddenly something gay glanced through the wavering sunsprays of the
woodland and the green scatter of the shadows. A white summer gown, a
dainty hat white-plumed, but beneath the bright feather a bowed head, a girl
with tears in her eyes—and lo! Mary Gordon standing alone and in sorrow
by the water-pools of the Deuch.
I had never learned to do such things, and even now I cannot tell what it
was that came over me. For without a moment’s hesitation I kneeled on one
knee, and taking her hand, I kissed it with infinite love and respect.
She turned quickly from me, dashing the tears from her face with her
hand.
“Quintin!” she cried—I think before she thought.
“Mary!” I said, for the first time in my life saying the word to my lady’s
face.
She held her hand with the palm pressed against my breast, pushing me
from her that she might examine my face.
“Why are you here?” she asked anxiously, “you have heard what they
say of my father?”
“I have heard, and I come to know?” I said quietly.
 She clasped her hands in front of her breast and then let them fall loosely
down in a sort of slack despair.
“I will tell you,” she said, “it is partly true. But the worst is not true!”
She was silent for a while, as if she were mastering herself to speak.
Then she burst out suddenly, “But what right have you or any other to
demand such things of me? Is not my father Sir Alexander Gordon of
Earlstoun, and who has name or fame like him in all Scotland? They that
accuse him are but jealous of him—even you would be glad like the others
to see him humiliated—brought low!”
“You do me wrong,” said I, yet more quietly; “you know it. Mary, I
came because I have no friends on earth like you and Alexander Gordon.
And the thing troubled me.”
“I know—I know,” she said, distractedly. “I think it hath well-nigh
driven me mad, as it hath my poor father.”
She put her hand to her forehead and pressed it, as if it had been full of a
great throbbing pain.
I wished I could have held it for her.
Then we moved side by side a little along the path, both being silent. My
thoughts were with hers. I saw her pain; I felt her pride, her reluctance to
speak.
Presently we came to a retired place where there was an alcove cut out
of the cliff, re-entrant, filled with all coolness and the stir of leaves.
Hither, as if moved by one instinct, we repaired. Mary sat her down upon
the stone seat. I stood before her.
There was a long waiting without a word spoken, so that a magpie came
and flicked his tail on a branch near by without seeing us. Then cocking his
eye downward, he fled with loud screams of anger and protestation.
“I will tell you all!” she said, suddenly.
But all the same it seemed as if she could not find it in her heart to begin.
“You know my father—root and branch you know him,” she said, at last;
“or else I could not tell you. He is a man. He has so great a repute, so full a
record of bravery, that none dares to point the finger. Through all Scotland
and the Low Countries it is sufficient for my father to say ‘I am Alexander
Gordon of Earlstoun!’
 “But as I need not tell you, a very strong man is a very weak man. And
so they trapped him, William Boyd, who called himself his friend, being the
traitor. For my father had known him in Holland and aided him with money
and providing when he studied as one of the lads of the Hill-folk at the
University of Groningen.
“Now this a man like William Boyd could not forgive—neither repay.
But in silence he hated and bode his time. For, though I am but young, I see
that nothing breeds hate and malice more readily than a helping hand
extended to a bad man.
“So devising evil to my father in secret, he met him at the Clachan of
Saint John as he came home from the market at Kirkcudbright, where he
had been dining with Kenmure and my Lord Maxwell. Quintin, you know
how it is with my father when he comes home from market—he is kind, he
is generous. The world is not large enough to hold his heart. Wine may be
in, but wit is not out.
“So Alexander Gordon being in this mood, Boyd and two or three of his
creatures met him in the highway.
“My father had oftentimes thwarted and opposed Boyd. But now his
stomach was warm and generous within him. So he cried to them, ‘A fair
good e’en to ye, gentlemen.’
“Whereat they glanced cunningly at one another, hearing the thick
stammer in my father’s voice.
“ ‘And good e’en to you, Earlstoun!’ they answered, taking off their hats
to him.
“The courtesy touched my father. It seemed that they wished to be
friends, and nothing touches a big careless gentleman like Alexander
Gordon more than the thought that others desire to make up a quarrel and
he will not.
“So with that he cried, ‘Let us bury bygones and be friends.’
“ ‘Agreed,’ answered Boyd, waving his hand jovially; let us go to the
change-house and toast the reconciliation in a tass of brandy,’
“This he said knowing that my father was on his way from market.”
“For this,” said I, not thinking of my place and dignity, “will I reckon
with William Boyd.”
Mary Gordon went on without noticing my interruption.
 “So though my father told them that he could not go, that his wife waited
for him by the croft entrance and that his daughter was coming down the
water-side to meet him, yet upon their crying out that he must not be hen-
pecked in the matter of the drowning of an ancient enmity, my father
consented to go with them.”
Mary Gordon looked before her a long time without speaking, as though
little liking to tell what followed. “They knew,” she said, “that he was to
preside that night at a meeting of the eldership and commissioners of the
Hill-folk. So they brought him as in the change-house they had made him to
the meeting.”
There was a long silence.
“And this was all?” I asked. For the accusation which had come to me
had been far graver than this.
“As I live and must die, that is all. The other things which they testify
that he did that night are but the blackness and foulness of their own
hearts.”
“I will go speak with him,” I said, moving as to pass on.
Mary Gordon had been seated upon a wall which jutted out over the
water. She leaped to her feet in an instant and caught me by the wrist,
looking with an eager and passionate regard into my eyes.
“You must not—you shall not!” she cried. “My father is not to be spoken
to. He is not himself. He has sworn that he will answer no man, speak to no
man, have dealings with no man, till the shame be staunched and his
innocency made to appear.”
“But I will bring him to himself,” I said, “I will reason with him, and
that most tenderly.”
“Nay,” she said, taking me eagerly by the breast of my coat, “I tell you
he will not listen to a word.”
“It is my duty,” I answered.
“Wherefore?” she cried, sharply. “You are not his minister.”
“No,” said I, “but I am more. I am both his friend and yours.”
“Do you mean to reprove him?” she asked.
“It is my duty—in part,” said I, for the thought of mine office had come
upon me, and I feared that for this girl’s sake I might even be ready
ignominiously to demit and decline my plain duty.
 “For that wherein he has given the unrighteous cause to speak
reproachfully, I will reprove him,” I said. “For the rest, I will aid, support,
and succour him in all that one man may do to another. By confession of his
fault, such as it has been, he may yet keep the Cause from being spoken
against.”
“Ah, you do not know my father, to speak thus of him,” Mary Gordon
cried, clasping her hands. “When he is in his fury he cares for neither man
nor beast. He might do you a hurt, even to the touching of your life. Ah, do
not go to him.” (Here she clasped her hands, and looked at me with such
sweet, petitionary graciousness that my heart became as wax within me.)
“Let him come to himself. What are reproof and hard words, besides the
shame that comes when such a man as my father sits face to face with the
sins of his own heart?”
Almost I had given way, but the thought of the dread excommunication,
and the danger which his children must also incur, compelled me.
“Hear me, Mary,” I said, “I must speak to him. For all our sakes—yours
as well—I must go instantly to Alexander Gordon.”
She waved her hand impatiently.
“Do not go,” she said. “Can you not trust me? I thought you—you once
told me that you loved me. And if you had loved me, I do not know, I might
——”
She paused. A wild hope—warm, tender, gloriously insurgent, rose-
coloured—welled up triumphantly in my heart. My blood hummed in my
ears.
“She would love me; she would give herself to me. I cannot offend her.
This alone is my happiness. This only is life. What matters all else?”
And I was about to give way. If I had so much as looked in her face, or
met her eyes, I must have fallen from my intent.
But I called to mind the path by which I had been led, the oath that had
been laid upon me to speak faithfully. The lonely way of a man—a sinful
man trying to do the right—gripped me like a vice, and compelled me
against my will.
“Mary,” I said, solemnly, “I love you more than life—more, perchance,
than I love God. But I cannot lay aside, nor yet shut out the doing of my
duty.”
 She thrust her hand out suddenly, passionately, from her, as if casting me
out of her sight for ever. She set her kerchief to her eyes.
“You have chosen!” she cried. “Go, then!”
“Mary,” I said, turning to follow her.
All suddenly she turned upon me and stamped her foot.
“I dare you to speak with me!” she cried, her eyes flashing with anger. “I
thought you were a man, and you are no better than a machine. You love!
You know not the A B C of it. You have never passed the hornbook. I doubt
not that you broke that poor lassie’s heart down there in the farm by the
water-side. She loved a stone and she died. Now you tell me that you love
me, and the first thing I ask of you you refuse, though it is for my own
father, and I entreat you with tears!”
“Mary,” I began to say quietly, “you do me great wrong. Let me tell you
——”
But she turned away down the path. I followed after, and at the parting
of the ways to house and stable she turned on me again like a lioness. “Oh,
go, I tell you! Go!” she cried. “Do your precious duty. But from this day
forth never, never dare to utter word to Mary Gordon again!”
 CHAPTER XXXIII.

THE DEMONIAC IN THE GARRET.

As all may understand, it was with bowed head and crushed heart that I
bent my steps towards the grey tower, sitting so stilly among the leafage of
the wood above the water.
Duty is doubtless noble, and virtue its own reward. But when there is a
lass in the case—why, it is somewhat harder to go against her will than to
counter all the law and the prophets.
I went up the bank towards the tower of Earlstoun, and as I came near
methought there was a strange and impressive silence over everything—like
a Sabbath-day that was yet no common or canny Sabbath.
At the angle of the outer wall one Hugh Halliday, an old servant of the
Gordons, came running toward me.
“Minister, minister,” he cried, “ye mauna come here. The maister has
gotten the possession by evil spirits. He swears that if ever a minister come
near him he will brain him, and he has taken his sword and pistols up into
the garret under the roof, and he cries out constantly that if any man stirs
him, he shall surely die the death.”
“But,” I answered, “he will not kill me, who have had no hand in the
matter—me who have also been persecuted by the Presbytery and by them
deposed.”
“Ah, laddie,” said the old man, shaking his palsied hand warningly at
me, “ye little ken the laird, if ye think that when the power o’ evil comes
ower him, he bides to think. He lets drive richt and left, and a’ that remains
to be done is but to sinder the dead frae the leevin’, or to gather up the
fragments that remain in baskets and corn-bags and sic-like.
“For instance, in the auld persecutin’ days there was Gleg Toshie, the
carrier, that was counted a great man o’ his hands, and at the Carlin’s Cairn
Sandy—the laird I mean—cam’ on Toshie spyin’ on him, or so he thocht.
And oor Maister near ended him when he laid hand on him.
“ ‘Haud aff,’ cried Peter Pearson the curate, ‘Wad ye kill the man,
Earlstoun?’
 “ ‘I would kill him and eat him too!’ cries the laird, as he gied him aye
the ither drive wi’ his neive. O he’s far frae canny when he’s raised.”
“Nevertheless I will see him,” said I; “I have a message to deliver.”
“Then I hope and trust ye hae made your peace wi’ your Maker, for ye
will come doon frae that laft a dead stiff corp and that ye’ll leeve to see.”
By the gate the Lady of Earlstoun was walking to and fro, wringing her
hands and praying aloud.
“Wrath, wrath, and dismay hath fallen on this house!” she cried. “The
five vials are poured out. And there yet remains the sixth vial. O Sandy, my
ain man, that it should come to this! That ye should tak’ the roofs like a
pelican in the desert and six charges o’ pooder in yon flask, forbye swords
and pistols. And then the swearin’—nae minced oaths, but as braid as the
back o’ Cairnsmuir. Waes me for Sandy, the man o’ my choice! A carnal
man was Sandy a’ the days o’ him, a man no to be ruled nor yet spoken to,
but rather like a lion to be withstood face to face. But then a little while and
his spirit would come to him like the spirit of a little child.”
We could hear as we walked and communed a growling somewhere far
above like the baffled raging of a caged wild beast.
“It is the spirit of the demoniac that is come to rend him,” she said.
“Hear to him, there he is; he is hard at it, cursing the Presbytery and a’
ministers. He is sorest upon them that he has liked best, as, indeed, the
possessed ever are. He says that he knows not why he is restrained from
braining me—me that have been his wife these many sorrowful years. But
thus far he hath been kept from doing any great injury. Even the servant
man that brought the message from his master, William Boyd, summoning
Alexander to appear before the Presbytery, he cast by main force into the
well, and if the man had not caught at the rope, and so gone more slowly to
the bottom, he would surely have been dashed to pieces.”
“But how long has he been thus?” I said. For as we listened, quaking, the
noise waxed and grew louder. Then anon it would diminish almost like the
howling or whimpering of a beaten dog, most horrid and uncanny to hear.
“Ever since yesterday at the hour when he gat the summons from the
Presbytery,” said the lady of Earlstoun.
“And have none been near him since that time?”
 “Only Mary,” she said; “she took up to him a bowl of broth. For he never
lifted his hand to her in his life. He bade her begone quickly, because he
was no fit company for human kind any more. She asked him very gently to
come to his own chamber and lie down in peace. But he cried out that the
ministers were coming, and that she must not stand in the way. For he was
about to shoot them all dead, like the black hoodie-craws that pyke the
young lambs’ e’en!
“ ‘And a bonny bit lamb ye are, faither,’ said Mary, trying to jest with
him to divert his mind; ‘a bonny lamb, indeed, with that great muckle
heather besom of a beard,’
“But instead of laughing, as was his wont, he cursed her for an impudent
wench, and told her to begone, that she was no daughter of his.”
“Has he been oftentimes taken with this seizure?” I asked.
“It has come to him once or twice since he was threatened with torture
before the lords of the Privy Council, and brake out upon them all as has
often been told—but never before like this.”
“I will go to him,” I said, “and adjure him to return to himself. And I will
exorcise the demon, if power be granted me of the Lord.”
“I pray you do not!” she cried, catching me and looking at me even more
earnestly than her daughter had done, though, perhaps, somewhat less
movingly. “Let not your blood also be upon this doomed house of
Earlstoun.”
 CHAPTER XXXIV.

THE CURSING OF THE PRESBYTERY.

As gently as I could I withdrew from her grasp, and with a pocket Bible
in my hand (that little one in red leather of the King’s printers which I
always carried about with me), I climbed the stair.
The word I had come so far to speak should not remain unspoken
through my weakness, neither must I allow truth to be brought to shame
because of the fears of the messenger.
So I mounted the turret stairs slowly, the great voice sounding out more
and more clearly as I advanced. It came in soughs and bursts, alternating
with lown intervals filled with indistinct mutterings. Then again a great
volley of cursing would shake the house, and in the afterclap of silence I
could hear the waesome yammer of my lady’s supplication beneath me
outside the tower.
But within, save for the raging of the stormy voice, there was an
uncanny silence. The dust lay thick where it had been left untouched for
days by any hand of domestic. I glanced within the great oaken chamber
where formerly I had spoken to Mary Gordon. It was void and empty. A
broken glass of carven Venetian workmanship and various colours lay in
fragments by the window. A stone jar with the great bung of Spanish cork
stood on the floor. There was a crimson sop of spilled wine on the table of
white scoured wood. The table-cloth of rich Spanish stuff wrought with
arabesques had been tossed into the corner. A window was broken, and
there were stains on the jagged edges, as if some one had thrust his hand
through the glass to his own hurt.
Nothing moved in the room, but in the thwart sunbeams the motes
danced, and the unstable shadows of the trees without flecked the floor.
All the more because of this unwholesome quiet in the great house of
Earlstoun, it was very dismaying to listen to the roll and thunder of the
voice up there, speaking on and on to itself in the regions above.
But I had come at much cost to do my duty, and this I could not depart
from. So I began to mount the last stairs, which were of wood, and
exceedingly narrow and precipitous.
 Then for the first time I could hear clearly the words of the possessed:
“Cast into deepest hell, Lord, if any power is left in Thee, the whole
Presbytery of Kirkcudbright! Set thy dogs upon them, O Satan, Prince of
Evil, for they have worked ill-will and mischief upon earth. Specially and
particularly gie Andrew Cameron his paiks! Rub the fiery brimstone flame
onto his bones, like salt into a new-killed swine. Scowder him with irons
heated white hot. Tear his inward parts with twice-barbed fishing hooks.
Gie William Boyd his bellyful of curses. Turn him as often on thy roasting-
spit as he has turned his coat on the earth. Frighten wee Telfair wi’ the
uncanniest o’ a’ thy deils’ imps. And as for the rest of them may they burn
back and front, ingate and outgate, hide, hair, and harrigals, till there is
nocht left o’ them but a wee pluff o’ ash, that I could hold like snuff
between my fingers and thumb and blaw away like the white head o’ the
dandelion.”
He came to an end for lack of breath, and I could hear him stir restlessly,
thinking, perhaps, that he had omitted some of the Presbytery who were
needful of a yet fuller and more decorated cursing.
I called up to him.
“Alexander Gordon, I have come to speak with you.”
“Who are you that dares giff-gaff with Alexander Gordon this day?”
“I am Quintin MacClellan, minister of the Gospel in Balmaghie, a friend
to Alexander Gordon and all his house.”
“Get you gone, Quintin MacClellan, while ye may. I have no desire for
fellowship with you. You are also of the crew of hell—the black corbies that
cry ‘Glonk! Glonk!’ over the carcase of puir perishing Scotland.”
“Hearken, Alexander Gordon,” said I, from the ladder’s foot, “I have
been your friend. I have sat at your table. A word is given me to speak to
you, and speak it I will.”
“And I also have a gun here that has a message rammed down its
thrapple. I warn ye clear and fair, if ye trouble me at all with any of your
clavers, ye shall get that message frae the black jaws of Bell-mouthed
Mirren.”
And as I looked up the wooden ladder which led into the dim garret
above me, I saw peeping through the angle of the square trap-door above
me the wicked snout of the musket—while behind, narrowed to a slit,
glinted, through a red mist of beard and hair, the eye of Sandy Gordon.
“Ye may shoot me if ye will, Alexander,” said I; “I am a man unarmed,
defenceless, and so stand fully within your danger. But listen first to that
which I have to say.
“You are a great man, laird of Earlstoun. Ye have come through much
and seen many peoples and heard many tongues. Ye have been harried by
the Malignants, prisoned by the King’s men, and now the Presbytery have
taken a turn at you, even as they did at me, and for the same reason.
“You were ever my friend, Earlstoun, and William Boyd mine enemy.
Therefore he was glad to take up a lying report against you that are my
comrade; for such is his nature. Can the sow help her foulness, the crow his
colour? Forbye, ye have given some room to the enemy to speak
reproachfully. You, an elder of the Hill-folk, have collogued in the place of
drinking with the enemies of our cause. They laid a snare for your feet, and
like a simple fool ye fell therein. So much I know. But the darker sin that
they witness against you—what say ye to that?”
“It is false as the lies that are spewed up from the vent of Hell!” cried the
voice from the trap-door above, now hoarse and trembling. I had touched
him to the quick.
“Who are they that witness this thing against you?”
He was silent for a little, and then he burst out upon me afresh.
“Who are you that have entered into mine own house of Earlstoun to
threat and catechise me? Is Alexander Gordon a bairn to be harried by
bairns that were kicking in swaddling clouts and buttock-hippens when he
was at the head of the Seven Thousand? And who may you be? A deposed
minister, a college jackdaw whom the other daws have warned from off the
steeple. I will not kill you, Quintin MacClellan, but I bid you instantly
evade and depart, for the spirit has bidden me fire a shot at the place where
ye stand!”
“Ye may fire your piece and slay your friend on the threshold of your
house, an’ it please you, laird of Earlstoun,” cried I, “but ye shall never say
that he was a man unfaithful, a man afraid of the face of men!”
“Stand from under, I say!”
 Nevertheless I did not move, for there had grown up a stubbornness
within me as there had done when the Presbytery set themselves to vex me.
Then there befell what seemed to be a mighty clap of thunder. A blast of
windy heat spat in my face; something tore at the roots of my hair; fire
singed my brow, and the reek of sulphur rose stifling in my nostrils.
The demon-possessed had fired upon me. For a moment I knew not
whether I was stricken or no, for there grew a pain hot as fire at my head.
But I stood where I was till in a little the smoke began to lazily clear
through the trap-door into the garret.
I put my hand to my head and felt that my brow was wet and gluey. Then
I thought that I was surely sped, for I knew that men stricken in the brain by
musket shot ofttimes for a moment scarce feel their wound. I understood
not till later the reason of my escape, which was that the balls of Earlstoun’s
fusil had no time to spread, but passed as one through my thick hair,
snatching at it and tearing the scalp as they passed.
 CHAPTER XXXV.

LIKE THE SPIRIT OF A LITTLE CHILD.

The smoke of the gun curled slowly and reluctantly out of the narrow
windows, and through the garret opening I heard a hurried rush of feet
beneath me on the stairs, light and quick—a woman’s footsteps when she is
young. My head span round, and had it not been for Mary Gordon, whose
arm caught and steadied me, I should doubtless have fallen from top to
bottom.
“Quintin, Quintin,” she cried, passionately, “are you hurt? Oh, my father
has slain him. Wherefore did I let him go?”
I held by the wall and steadied myself on her shoulder, scarce knowing
what I did.
Suddenly she cried aloud, a little frightened cry, and, drawing her
kerchief from her bosom, she reached up and wiped my brow, down which
red drops were trickling.
“You are hurt! You are sort hurt!” she cried. “And it is all my fault!”
Then I said, “Nay, Mary, I am not hurt. It was but a faintish turn that
came and passed.”
“Oh, come away,” she cried; “he will surely slay you if you bide here,
and your blood will be upon my hands.”
“Nay, Mary,” I answered; “the demon, and not your father, did this thing,
and such can do nothing without permission. I will yet meet and expel the
devil in the name of the Lord!”
She put her netted fingers about my arm to draw me away; nevertheless,
even then, I withstood her.
“Alexander Gordon,” I cried aloud, “the evil spirit hath done its worst.
He will now depart from you. I am coming up the ladder.”
I drew my arm free and mounted. As my head rose through the trap-door
I own that my heart quaked, but there had come with the danger and the
excitement a sort of angry exaltation which, more than aught else, carried
me onward. Also I knew within me that if, as I judged, God had other work
yet for me to do in Scotland, He would clothe me in secret armour of proof
against all assault.
Also the eyes of Mary Gordon were upon me. I had passed my word to
her; I could not go back.
As I looked about the garret between the cobwebs, the strings of onions,
and the bunches of dried herbs, I could see Sandy Gordon crouching at the
far end, all drawn together like a tailor sitting cross-legged on his bench. He
had his musket between his knees, and his great sword was cocked
threateningly over his shoulder.
“What, Corbie! Are ye there again?” cried he, fleeringly. “Then ye are
neither dead nor feared.”
“No,” said I; “the devil that possesses you has been restrained from
doing me serious hurt. I will call on the Lord to expel what He hath already
rendered powerless.”
“Man, Quintin,” he cried, “ye should have fetched Telfair and the
Presbytery with you. Ye are not fit for the job by yourself. Mind you, this is
no hotchin’ wee de’il, sitting cross-legged on the hearth in the gloaming like
Andrew Mackie’s in Ringcroft. It takes the black Father of Spirits himself,
ripe from hell, to grip the Bull of Earlstoun, and set him to roaring like this
in the blank middle of the day.”
“But,” said I, “there is One stronger than any devil or devilkin—your
father’s and your mother’s God! You are but a great bairn, Sandy. Do ye
mind where ye first learned the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-third Psalm?”
At my words the great mountain of a man threw his head back and
dropped his sword.
“Aye, I mind,” he said, sullenly.
“Where was it?” said I.
“It was at my mother’s knee in the turret chamber that looks to the
woods, if ye want to ken.”
“What did your mother when ye had ended the lesson?”
“What is that to you, Quintin MacClellan?” he thundered, fiercely. “I tell
you, torment me not!”
He snarled this out at me suddenly like the roar of a beast in a cage,
thrusting forth his head at me and showing his teeth in the midst of his red
beard.
 “What did your mother when ye had learned your psalm?”
“She put her hands upon my head.”
“And then what did she?”
“She prayed.”
“Do ye mind the words of that prayer?”
“I mind them.”
“Then say them.”
“I will not!” he shouted loud and fierce, clattering his gun on the floor
and leaping to his feet. His sword was in his hand, and he pointed it
threateningly at me.
“You will not say your mother’s prayer,” I answered; “then I will say it
for you.”
“No, you shall not, Quintin MacClellan,” he growled. “If it comes to
that, I will say it myself. What ken you about my mother’s prayer?”
“I have a mother of mine own, and not once nor twice she hath said a
prayer for me.”
The point of the sword dropped. He stood silent.
“Her hands were on your head,” I suggested, “you had finished your
prayers. It was in the turret chamber that looks to the north.”
“I ken—I ken!” he cried, turning his head this way and that like a beast
tied and tormented.
But in his eyes there grew a far-away look. The convulsive fingers
loosened on the sword-hilt. The blade fell unheeded to the ground and lay
beside the empty musket.
“O Lord!” he gasped, hardly above his breath, “from all the dangers of
this night keep my laddie. From powers of evil guard him with thy good
angels. The Lord Christ be his yoke-bearer. Deliver him from sin and from
himself. When I am under green kirkyard sward, be Thou to him both father
and mother. O God, Father in Heaven, bless the lad!”
It was his mother’s prayer.
And as the words came softer Alexander Gordon fell on his knees, and
moaned aloud in the dim smoky garret.
Then, judging that my work was done, I, too, kneeled on my knees, and
for the space of an hour or thereby the wind of the summer blew through
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