66 Mohammed Abdu on the Supernatural t I 9°3 



day, and how French opinion has been quite converted by him to 

 friendliness with England. At his Paris club, Button, who had pre- 

 viously been treated coldly as an Englishman, was received the other day 

 as he passed through almost with demonstrations. 



" Mohammed Abdu sat with me during our drive on the coach- 

 box, I driving my four Arabs, and we had much conversation on 

 Egyptian affairs. 



" gth Aug. (Sunday). — I have had an interesting time these last 

 few days with the Mufti, and to-day, walking in Newbuildings Wood, 

 we had a long talk about religion. I asked him especially as to his 

 belief in angels and spirits. About these, though not denying their 

 existence, he said ' No one has seen them, nor is it possible to know 

 anything about them. About God, too, it is impossible to know.' I 

 asked him about a future life. In this he believes, and that there will 

 be a happy and an unhappy state, but in what way he does not know. 

 He does not believe in eternal punishment. 



" We have talked also about the events of 1882, and he has 

 read through the papers I have here connected with Arabi's trial, 

 and urges me strongly to publish a history of that time. My difficulty, 

 however, is that my most important documents are letters written by 

 persons still living who might and probably would object, while with- 

 out them it would be impossible to put forward an irrefutable exposure 

 of our English intrigues. There is nothing personal in these letters, 

 and they are quite fair historical documents, and must some day 

 see the light, and it ought to be soon. Lastly, we have discussed the 

 actual state of justice in Egypt, as to which the Editor of the ' Man- 

 chester Guardian ' has asked me to give him information. This I 

 shall now be able with the Mufti's help to supply. 



" 10th Aug. — With Mohammed Abdu to Brighton to see Herbert 

 Spencer. (It was especially to see Spencer that he had come to Eng- 

 land, as he held him to be a great philosopher, and had translated 

 his volume on education into Arabic. I had written to Spencer to 

 explain this and propose a visit.) Spencer sent his carriage, and his 

 secretary, Mr. Troughton, to meet us at the Brighton station. We 

 found the old man in bed in his back drawing-room at Percival 

 Terrace, where he has been bedridden since April. The stroke he had 

 then has not affected his mind, and we found him quite lucid in his 

 ideas as well as strong in voice, but he is terribly thin, and his hand 

 is a mere skeleton's. He received us for a short time before lunch- 

 eon, and again at three o'clock. At first he tried talking French, but 

 very deliberately and looking for his words, and soon dropped into 

 English, which I translated to Abdu. He lamented the disappearance 

 of ' right ' from the range of modern politics in Europe, and de- 

 nounced the Transvaal war as an outrage on humanity. ' There is 



