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Finally, at the other extremity of Europe, and even outside of Europe,
in the seventh century the caliph, in the fifteenth century a sultan,
a Mahomet or an Omar, a fanatical Arab or brutal Turk, who had just
overcome Christians with the sword, himself assigned the limits of his
own absolutism: if the vanquished were reduced to the condition of
heavily ransomed tributaries and of inferiors daily humiliated, he
allowed them their worship, civil laws and domestic usages; he left
them their institutions, their convents and their schools; he allowed
them to administer the affairs of their own community as they pleased
under the jurisdiction of their patriarch, or other natural
chieftains. - Thus whatever the tyrant may have been, he did not
attempt to entirely recast Man, nor to subject all his subjects to the
recasting. However penetrating the tyranny, it stopped in the soul at
a certain point; that point reached, the sentiments were left free.
No matter how comprehensive this tyranny may have been, it affected
only one class of men; the others, outside the net, remained free.
When it wounded all at once all sensitive chords, it did so only to a
limited minority, unable to defend themselves.
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