Written in 1875 and published anonymously in Bombay in 1882, `Abdu'l-Baha's Secret of Divine Civilization is considered one of the early modernist texts of the 19th century directed at reform in Iran and in the wider Middle Eastern society. In a language that is reminiscent of the universal discourses of modernity in his time, `Abdu'l-Baha discusses in this text, the educational, artistic, scientific, governmental and technological advances in Europe, encouraging their adoption and denouncing simultaneously the fears and "antagonisms" of Iranian Shi'ites against Western influence, calling these anxieties, "ensnarements". Dichotomies between Western modernity and Iranian modernity are by no means clear in this text. "The West", and more generally "Europe", often function as the site of material progress and technological advance worthy of simulation. Yet this material "civilization" is described as a temporary "external lustre without inner perfection" and "a confused medley of dreams", "a vapor in the desert which the thirsty dreameth to be water". In tracing the concept of "the West" in texts by `Abdu'l-Baha, this paper notes some of the differences that appear in both his descriptions and his language as he discusses London, Paris and New York in his Western talks, interviews and informal interactions. Striking is the manner in which these latter texts begin with a reflection on the material settings that contextualize his speech: the weather, the news, this building, that event etc., and culminate with a contrast with the "spiritual civilization" he envisions for the West. `Abdu'l-Baha thus focuses his address to the West on what he sees as the base terms for a moral and just civilization in which both material and spiritual "civilization" are advanced in support of each other. Using photographs and film still from his visit to the three capitals of modernity, this paper situates `Abdu'l-Baha's addresses to "the West" in the specific social and material conditions of his visits, to describe how the concept of an "advanced moral civilization" is reconfigured from the reflective surfaces of modernity, that is, the material settings and landscapes of his Western travels and talks. We should should remember that in 1875, these were mere "dream landscapes" of presumed "Western" modernity which `Abdu'l-Baha's Secret of Divine Civilization encouraged the Middle East to adopt. In his travels to "the West" in 1911 and 1912, these landscapes become the material ground from which the Iranian modernist finally mined a "Divine Civilization".