Now philosophers aver,* that the affection of the patron for the patronized is above that in the con­verse relation; because a creditor or benefactor feels regard for a debtor or well-wisher, and makes it an object to prolong their lives. Here however the creditor, as he tenders the well-being of the debtor with a view only to the recovery of his dues, in reality feels regard only for his own money; unlike the benefactor, who feels regard to the benefited without any view to interest, simply because he is a fit object for the influence of good: whereas the benefited has no such affection for the benefactor. The benefits are what he likes in se; the benefactor only by contingence. Again, the benefactor employs trouble and exertion in advancing the interest of the benefited, and so far resembles a person who has amassed property by anxiety and toil. Such a one invariably feels regard for it, and is careful to lay it out to advantage: unlike one whose property has reached him without toil, who is ignorant of its value, and neglects caution in its expenditure. For this reason a child is dearer to its mother than to its father; she having endured more toil and trouble in rearing it. Of the same class is the fact of a poet always preferring his own poetry, and admiring it more than others do. But as to the party benefited, he is a recipient, and in receiving has no trouble to undergo; and there­fore his affection for the benefactor cannot possibly be of the like order. On these grounds the affec­tion of benefactor for the benefited may be taken to be greater than in the converse relation: an additional instance of the inferiority of all the species of affection to that which arises from a love for goodness and real perfection. For this is a delight of the intellect, and has to do, not with contingencies, but with the essence of the soul; and therefore it is that the foundations of this love are exempt and delivered from the inroads of dissolution, nor can slander itself find a path to its domains: unlike the other sorts, which cease with the cessation of their cause; as intimated in the text, In a single day may friends turn hostile each to each; saving the pious.

Now this enjoyment is really to be attained only after we have accomplished our pursuit of the nobler virtues, and actually nourish them in our inmost souls; after the veil that separates us from the world of thought is drawn aside, and we are admitted to the contemplation of abstract unity, perfect truth, eternal beauty, and all the privileges of the everlasting mysteries.

This is the highest elevation of the perfections, and has indeed by some philosophers been held to be beyond the height of felicity accessible to man. For till our being is cleared from the defilement of physical and mental organization, as well as from the incrustations of material affinities, it can be no glass to reflect the beauty of that rare perfection: till the wayfarer has left selfishness and self behind him, (and what point so distant, what stage so remote?) he cannot hope to touch on the confines of reunion.*

Aristotle avers, that when the Almighty regards any one as a friend, he confederates with him, just as ordinary friends confederate for mutual advantage;* upon which the Akhlak-i-Nāsiry observes, that such expressions are not used in our phraseology. This, however, is by no means clear, for similar ones are many both in Scripture and Sunnah: The Almighty hath said it, he that befriends the righteous. We have reckoned upon God, and he is the best of patrons; — and among the dicta, stronger still, as when he says, “When thou lovest him, thou art as his ears and eyes,” — and so on to the end of the declaration: and again, “Him that loveth me I accept; him that I accept I owe for, and to him that I owe for I owe myself.”* Aristotle likewise says, it does not fol­low that every man is to be social, although man’s good is placed in society; any more than that every animal is to be content with death, because death is their destination. Rather is he to devote his entire powers to a life in the divinity, and then, although in years a child, in purpose he is magnanimous, and in intellect he is noble. Intellect, indeed, is of all created things the noblest, being that essence which, by divine command, predomi­nates over all things.* As the prophet says, —

To make this good, we have only to aver, as con­cluded alike by the followers of observation and demonstration — admitted equally by the masters of perception and conception, — that the first principle, which, at the mandate, Be — and it was,* issued, by the instrumentality of the ineffable power and will,* from the chaotic ocean of inexistence, to anchor on the shores of perceptibility, was a simple and lumi­nous essence, which, in the language of philosophy, is termed the primary intellect; — (though, in some accounts, it is termed the supreme intelligence; and the greatest fathers of mysticism and investigation call it the Muhammedan spirit;*) — which luminous essence comprehended itself and all that it possessed, and all that by means of that could be devised, of actual entities, as they were, are, and will be; all principles and all phenomena being comprised and combined in its essence by a species of moral com­plication, just as the seed in a manner contains branches, leaves, and fruit.* According to the successive order of their inherence in which essence, all things are brought, in their prefigured mate­rials,* from the stores of negative possibility to the arena of action, and from void inexistence to the expanse of manifestation. God expunges what he will, or ratifies, and with him is the original of Scripture.* And when, in the plenitude of divine mercy, the series of causation had reached the point of entities as now perpetuated, that is, of this mate­rial world — a home and dwelling-house for shift and change — a theatre* for displaying the varieties of the divine glories and perfection unlimited — the supreme wisdom placed the conduct of this world in charge of a sphere, fixed in its nature, but changeable in its properties, —

that is, the heavens; in order that, by its revolving motion, the fresh positions inherent in its construc­tion might be realized in act;* at every position, that determinate event coming forth which is tied and bound up therewith; and, at every moment, a fresh form in the chain of existence being mirrored on the surface of elementary matter by the proximate cause of these events, which we call the active intellect, or highest of the single forms of intellect.* Lastly, the terms of production being limited to three par­turitions,* the will of the wise intelligence, whose power is as vast as his wisdom is penetrating, was pleased to ordain, that by the union and intermix­ture in human nature (the noblest of the animal species) of the collective perfections of the previous [animal] stages, the virtues of the celestial intellect, which was the source of production, might, in this glorious species, appear in the shape of progressive intellect; that, when the soul of man had been transfigured into this station, it might arrive at that which, for intellect, is the proper one, — the world above us:* completion thus coalescing with com­mencement, and the great round of being accom­plishing itself in opposite circuits of descent and rise.

Celestial intellect, then, is prologue to the work of being, and human intellect is epilogue, just like a seed, which, after expanding into the forms of branches, twigs, and leaves, and passing through all the stages of increment and degrees of ramifica­tion, comes forth in the end in its original form of concentration, an emblem of the operations of unity.*

The secret principle of circuitous process, main­tained through all degrees of all things, spiritual or corporeal, above us or below, appears in the heavens, which are the bond of regularity to the material world, in the form of movement in position; in incrementary bodies, in the proportional movement of growth and decrepitude; in the reasonable soul, in the connexion of the stream of thought; — all which are, in fact, shadows of the motion* vital in se, which, in the language of the high priests of ecstasy and intuition, is called the procession of his essence unto his essence.*