These views are of the highest importance, coming as they do from so philosophical a thinker as Sprenger; and they are founded on truth. But in estimating the causes of the results above described, Sprenger has not sufficiently adverted to the repressive influence of Islam itself, which placed shackles on the independence of human thought, stifled free inquiry, and imprisoned the intellect in the close dark cell of dogma and superstition 

Of the incredible mass of inventions and fabrications called into life by the stir and spiritual activity of the first sixty years of the Hegira, Sprenger considers that but a small proportion has survived, and this the portion most congenial with the Mahometan mind. The principle of natural selection, as it were, preserved the materials which suited the requirements, tastes, and prejudices of the people, and dropped the rest. Tradition, as we now have it, was, in other words, moulded by the people themselves. 

" Thousands and thousands occupied themselves with handing
" down traditions. In every Mosque they committed them to
" memory, and rehearsed them in every social gathering. All such
" knowledge was the common property of the nation; it was learned
" by heart, and transmitted orally. It possessed therefore, in the
" highest possible degree, the elements of life and plasticity. Bun-
" sen has discovered the divinity of the Bible in its always having
" been the people's book. If this criterion be decisive, then no
" religion has better claim to be called the vox Dei, because none
" is in so full a sense the vox populi. The creations of the period
" we have been considering possess this character for hundreds of
" millions of our fellow-men; for modern Islamism is as far removed
" from the spirit in which the Coran was composed, as Catholicism
" is from the spirit of the Gospel; and modern Islamism is grounded
" upon tradition. But in tradition we find nothing but the Ideal,
" Invention, Fancy. Historical facts, however they may have been
" floating full of life among the people in the days of Ibn Abbâs and
" the other founders of genealogy, were trodden under feet:—because
" men wished to remove every barrier which stood in the way of
" self-glorification. And, of the thousand inventions which every
" day gave birth to, only those were recognised as true which most
" flattered the religious and national pride " (vol. iii. p. clxxviii.).