souls of Adam's descendants are descended from him as their bodies are? Or does it teach that the souls of the individual members of the human race were pre-existent? Or, as a third possibility, does it teach that the souls of men are individually created by the direct act of God?

Some think that it is the second of these doctrines which is the doctrine of the Qur'an, and that it maintains the pre-existence of the innumerable souls which have come or are yet to come into this world. Those who think so rely on the following passage: 'And when thy Lord drew forth their posterity from the loins of the sons of Adam, and took them to witness against themselves (saying), Am not I your Lord? They answered, Yea; we do bear witness. (This was done) lest they should say, at the day of resurrection, Verily we were negligent in this (matter, because we were not apprised thereof) ' [Suratu'l-A'raf (vii) 171] . The commentators, according to Sale, explain 'that God stroked Adam's back, and extracted from his loins his whole posterity, which should come into the world until the resurrection, one generation after another; that these men were actually assembled all together in the shape of ants which were endued with understanding; and that after they had, in the presence of the angels, confessed their dependence on God, they were again caused to return into the loins of their great ancestor. 'From this fact it appears', adds Sale, ' that the doctrine of pre-existence is not unknown to the Muhammadans.' ¹

Sale, it will be noted, does not claim that the doctrine

of the pre-existence of the soul is taught in the Qur'an but is satisfied with saying simply that this doctrine is not unknown to the Muhammadans'. The passage, however, is very obscure, and it is very difficult to reconcile the text of the Qur'an with the story referred to by Sale. The Qur'an does not say that Adam's posterity were extracted from his loins; but that their posterity were extracted from the loins of the sons of Adam. It is more than difficult to know what the passage means; but whatever its meaning may be, it can have, after all, little weight in the matter of the question before us, seeing that there are other passages, not a few in number, which teach a clear and plain doctrine on this point.

We have already seen that, according to the Qur'an, the existence of the ethereal element in the nature of Adam was dependent on a direct act of the Creator, who inbreathed into Adam's body of His Own Spirit. We shall now see that, according to the Qur'an, not merely are the descendants of Adam 'created' as truly as he was, but that in this creation, the inbreathing of the divine Spirit into the individual members of the race still occurs.

After the creation of the first man and the first woman, however, God changed His mode of operation. Adam He created from clay; Hawa (Eve) He created directly from Adam; but now when He 'creates' a man He employs other means. The fact of creation remains, the method of creation changes. 'God created you (first) of the dust, and afterwards of seed, and He hath made you man and wife. No female conceiveth or bringeth forth, but with His knowledge' [Suratu'l-