Arabs could be swung on an
idea as on a cord; for the unpledged
allegiance of their minds made them obedient servants. None of them would escape the bond until success had come, and with it responsibility and duty and engagements. Then the idea was gone and the work ended--in ruins. Without a
creed they could be taken to the four corners of the world (but not to heaven) by being shown the riches of
earth and the pleasures of it; but if on the road, led in this fashion, they met the
prophet of an idea, who had nowhere to lay his head and who depended for his food on charity or birds, then they would all leave their wealth for his inspiration. They were incorrigibly children of the idea, feckless and colour-blind, to whom
body and
spirit were for ever and inevitably opposed.
Their mind was strange and dark, full of depressions and exaltations, lacking in rule, but with more of ardour and more fertile in belief than any other in the world. They were a people of starts, for whom the abstract was the strongest motive, the process of infinite courage and variety, and the end nothing. They were as unstable as water, and like water would perhaps finally prevail. Since the dawn of life, in successive waves they had been dashing themselves against the coasts of flesh. Each wave was broken, but, like the sea, wore away ever so little of the granite on which it failed, and some day, ages yet, might roll unchecked over the place where the material world had been, and God would move upon the face of those waters.
T.E. Lawrence, Seven Pillars of Wisdom