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The Second Gate. Introduction. On the explication of the aspects of reflection upon the created things, and the bounty of God's beneficence upon them.
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The author said: When we had set down in the First Gate the aspects of the purification of affirming the unity of God (mighty and exalted),
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and since reflection upon the manifest wisdom in the created things of the Creator (exalted be He) is the nearest of paths to verifying-the-reality of finding Him, and the most well-trodden of roads to the knowledge of His true reality,
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it was incumbent upon us to follow this with it — so that we might bring each gate together with what is fitting to it among the gates, and follow each concept with what befits it among the concepts by which there is laid upon us obedience to the Creator (exalted be He), for which He created us, as the Book says: "And God has so made it that men should fear before Him" (Ecclesiastes 3:14).
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So I say first: the blessings of God (exalted be He) upon His creatures — though they be general and inclusive of all of them, as the Friend said: "The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works" (Psalms 145:9) —
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most of them are blinded from discerning these blessings, and from magnifying their worth. They are ignorant of their import on account of three obstacles.
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The first of them: the abundance of preoccupation with the world and the amassing of it, and their greed for what has escaped them of it and what has proven difficult for them of its pleasures, so that they turned away from looking upon the blessings of God upon them, because their souls are attached to the magnitude of what they hope for in the fulfillment of their desires and the satisfying of their longings for it,
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for whenever they attained through it to a station, they sought what was above it, and desired what lay beyond it, and so they deem the abundant blessings to be few, and count the lavish gifts deficient, until they came to reckon every blessing that has come
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as if it had been wrested from themselves, and what has accrued to them out of it as injuries that have struck them. They do not bring God to mind — the One who bestowed it upon them — like the saying of the Friend (peace be upon him): "The wicked man in his pride does not seek; 'There is no God' is the whole of his scheming" (Psalms 10:4).
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The second obstacle is their emerging into this world while in the state of brutes — ignorant and unseeing — as the Wise One said: "Like a wild ass colt is man born" (Job 11:12).
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And their growing up amid the prior blessings of God and being constantly bound up with them, until those blessings become for them familiar and customary, as if they were essential to them — not separable from them, not parting from them all the length of their lives.
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So when they come to reason, and their discernment grows strong, they remain ignorant of the aspect of the blessing upon them, and do not bind their hearts to thank God for it, out of ignorance of the worth of the blessing and of the One who has bestowed it upon them.
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Their case in this is like the case of a man of generosity who found an abandoned infant in a wasteland of the earth, and took pity on him, and brought him into his house, and raised him and fed him and clothed him and was lavish with him in every aspect of his welfare, until the child came to reason and understand the modes of his upbringing.
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Then this man heard of a captive in the hand of his enemy, who had reached an extreme of misery and hunger and nakedness over a long stretch of time — so he had compassion on his condition, and did not cease to manage matters gently with his enemy until he released him, and ransomed him at his price.
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Then, after this, the man brought him into his house and treated him kindly and was lavish with him in some part of what he had been lavish with upon the child.
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Then this captive man — once delivered — was more discerning and more grateful for the man's blessing upon him than the child who had been raised and brought up in his beneficence: because he had passed from the state of misery to the state of relief and ease in his moment of discernment,
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so that he was abundantly discerning of the kindness of the man of generosity to him and his bestowal of blessings upon him.
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The child, by contrast, was ignorant of the worth of the blessing upon him — even when his discernment grew strong and his reason was established — on account of his familiarity with it from the time of his infancy.
And not one of those possessed of reason doubts that his generosity and his blessing upon the child
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And no one of the people of reason doubts that the man's bounty and blessing upon the child were *greater*, and his beneficence to him *more manifest*, and the obligation of thanks and praise for it *more binding* — and this is what Scripture compares to in saying: "I myself taught Ephraim to walk, taking them in my arms; but they did not know that I healed them" (Hosea 11:3).
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The third obstacle in their ignorance of the worth of God's blessing upon them is what befalls them in the world from the various kinds of injuries, and the various calamities that overtake them in their bodies and in their property.
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They are ignorant of the causes that lie behind the aspects of the blessing that are in these, and the benefits of trial and discipline for them within them — like the saying of the Friend (peace be upon him): "Happy is the man whom You discipline, O Lord, and out of Your Law do You teach" (Psalms 94:12).
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They forget that they themselves, and their property, are noble blessings God has bestowed upon them out of His generosity and bounty — that He then enacts among them, by His justice, what His wisdom has made obligatory;
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so they fall into despair at the going-forth of His justice among them, and they do not praise Him when His bounty and beneficence become manifest upon them.
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So their ignorance carries them to denying the blessing and the One who has bestowed it — and in many of them the ignorance reaches so far as railing against Him in His deeds, and in the various creatures He has fashioned for their welfare.
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How like they are, in this, to a company of blind men brought into a house prepared with everything for their welfare —
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every item set in the best position and most perfectly arranged, designed to deliver their benefits and aim at their welfare.
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Moreover, beneficial collyria were made ready for them in it, and a skilled physician to treat them with these collyria so that their sight might be restored —
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yet they were heedless of the treatment, and did not bind themselves to obedience to the physician set in charge of their cure.
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So they wandered about in the house, on the worst of conditions on account of their blindness;
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whenever they set out to walk in the house, they stumbled over the very arrangements set up for their welfare, and pitched forward upon their faces —
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some among them wounded, some broken. Great grew their misery, and their affliction redoubled.
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And so they took to blaming the master of the house and its builder, and they disparaged his work, and ascribed it to negligence and bad management,
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and they claimed that he had not intended toward them an intent of bounty and beneficence, but rather an intent of misery and affliction —
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and so that became a cause for denying the blessings of the master of the house upon them and his beneficence toward them — like the saying of the Wise One: "Yea also, when the fool walks by the way, his understanding fails him, and he says to everyone that he is a fool" (Ecclesiastes 10:3).
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Since this is so, it is incumbent on the people of knowledge and understanding to awaken whoever is ignorant of God's blessings into discerning them, and to guide people to the knowledge of His bounty within them by the way of their intellects.
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For how many a blessing is its possessor deprived of its sweetness, and his joy in it spoiled, by his lack of discernment and his ignorance of its bounty!
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When the people of blessings are made to perceive the aspects of bounty in them, and there is unveiled to them what was hidden from them of these, great will be their praise and thanksgiving to the One who has bestowed them.
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There will come to them, by this, both the savoring of them in this world and abundant reward in the next, as the Wise One said in the matter of awakening: "The words of the wise are like goads, and as nails firmly fixed — the masters of collections; they were given by one Shepherd" (Ecclesiastes 12:11).
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He compares the speech of the wise, by way of awakening, to ox-goads; and likens it to firmly-fixed nails — for the gathering and binding-together and composing that they accomplish, to fix their meanings in the hearts, and the ordering of the aspects of wisdom by their means within the souls.
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And *baʿalei asuphot* was explicated as "masters of compilation," supplying the *divrei* from the start of the verse — so that the meaning reads: *and as nails firmly fixed are the words of the masters of compilation* —
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because books composed in the various kinds of wisdom are stable and enduring; their benefit is never severed. That is why he likens them to nails firmly fixed.
So it is now fitting that we explain, of the matter of reflection,
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concerning six matters:
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The first of them is on the definition of reflection and its true nature.
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The second: whether reflection upon the created things is incumbent upon us or not.
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The third: in what way is reflection upon the created things to be done.
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The fourth: how many kinds of wisdom there are in the created things by which it is possible for us to reflect.
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The fifth: which of the kinds is nearest to us and most obligatory upon us to reflect upon, more than the rest of them.
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The sixth: on the things that spoil reflection and what follows from them.
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Section 1.
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He said: As for the definition of reflection — it is the comprehension of the traces of God's wisdom (mighty and exalted) in the created things, and the registering of these in the soul according to the strength of the reflecting man's discernment.
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For wisdom — though its traces vary in the created things — is one in its root and its source.
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It is like the sun, which is one in itself, but the colors of its ray differ in the panes of glass that are made of white glass, of green, of black, of red — so that its light differs according to the differences in the colors of the glass.
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And like the water by which the gardens are watered: it brings forth the flowers, differing in color, so that the water itself takes on color according to them.
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So understand, regarding the created things of the Maker (mighty and exalted) — both the small among them and the great — and consider attentively what is hidden from you of them, and you will find them as I have described, God willing.
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It is on account of the difference of these traces in the created things that the comprehension and reflection upon them have been laid upon us — until their concept becomes established within our souls and settles in our imaginations.
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For if the traces of wisdom were uniform throughout all created things, no one would be in doubt regarding their matter, and the man of intellect and the ignorant would be equal in discerning them; and the cause
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The cause for this — and God knows best and is wisest — on account of which not all created things were on a single pattern and a single shape,
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is that the thing that performs one action only, perpetually, indicates that its action is not by its choice —
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but rather it acts only by the nature with which it has been impressed, and there is a compeller compelling it to that action, with no possibility of changing it:
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like fire, whose action is only to burn; and like water, which cools only by its nature.
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But that which acts by its choice — diverse actions become manifest from it.
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Since the Creator (exalted be He) is *choosing* in His action — not compelled, not constrained, not impressed-with-nature —
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He made the various things according to what His wisdom made obligatory, so that, by their variations, they might indicate His unity, and that He is choosing in His action —
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as the Friend (peace be upon him) said: "Whatever the Lord pleased, He did, in the heavens and on the earth, in the seas and all the deeps" (Psalms 135:6).
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So the diversity of the traces of wisdom in the created things became necessary on this account.
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And His wisdom (exalted be He) is higher than that we should comprehend it —
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we have mentioned only one aspect from among many aspects we have not grasped,
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for to Him (mighty and exalted) belongs the perfect wisdom; there is no Lord besides Him.
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He said: As for whether we are obligated to reflect upon the created things or not —
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I say that reflection upon the created things, and inference by them concerning the wisdom of the Creator (mighty and exalted), is laid upon us by the rational, the scriptural, and the transmitted.
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As for from the rational: the intellect testifies that the superiority of the rational being over the non-rational is only by the merit of its discernment, its understanding, and its receiving of knowledge,
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of the secrets of wisdom established throughout the whole world,
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As for the rational: the intellect bears witness that the bounty of the rational over the non-rational is only by the bounty of its discernment and its receptivity to the secrets of wisdom — as the Book says: "Who teaches us by means of the beasts of the earth, and makes us wiser than the birds of the heavens" (Job 35:11).
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When a man employs his thought and his understanding in the secrets of wisdom and in reflection upon its traces, his bounty over the brute beast is according to that.
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But if he is heedless of them, he is like the brute beast — indeed, lower than it — as the Book says: "The ox knows its owner, and the ass its master's crib; Israel does not know, My people does not consider" (Isaiah 1:3).
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As for the scriptural: the saying of the Book: "Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these?" (Isaiah 40:26).
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And the Friend said: "When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which You have established" (Psalms 8:4).
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And the Book said: "Will you not know? Will you not hear? Has it not been told to you from the beginning? Have you not understood the foundations of the earth?" (Isaiah 40:21).
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And He said: "You deaf, hear, and you blind, look that you may see" (Isaiah 42:18).
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And He said: "Better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting, for that is the end of every man, and the living shall lay it to his heart" (Ecclesiastes 7:2).
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And He said: "The wise man's eyes are in his head, but the fool walks in darkness" (Ecclesiastes 2:14).
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And He said: "The path of the righteous is like the light of dawn, shining ever brighter unto the established day; the way of the wicked is like darkness, they do not know in what they stumble" (Proverbs 4:18–19).
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As for the transmitted: the saying of our early ones (peace be upon them): "Whoever is able to compute the cycles and the constellations and does not compute — concerning him Scripture says, And the harp and the lyre, the tambourine and the flute and wine are at their feasts, but they do not look at the work of the Lord, and they do not see the doing of His hands" (b. Shabbat 75a, citing Isaiah 5:12).
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And they said: "Whence that a man is obligated to compute the cycles and the constellations? As it is said: And you shall observe and you shall do, for that is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the peoples (Deuteronomy 4:6) — what wisdom and understanding is there in the eyes of the peoples? — say: the computation of cycles and constellations" (b. Shabbat 75a).
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And they said: "Compute the loss of a commandment against its reward, and the reward of a transgression against its loss" (m. Avot 2:1).
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And they said: "Had the Torah not been given to Israel, we should have learned chastity from the cat, aversion to forbidden unions from the dove, propriety from the rooster, and not to rob from the ant" (b. Eruvin 100b).
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Thus the obligation of reflecting upon created things, and of drawing inference from the traces of wisdom, has been established — so understand.
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Section 3.
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He said: As for the manner of reflection upon the created things —
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I say that reflection upon the created things is consideration of the pillars of the world, and of its branches composed of these, and of the disposition of the parts of every composite and the aspect of its utility,
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and of the traces of wisdom in its creation and its form and its shape and its welfare, and of the final cause for which it was created —
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and the discrimination between this world's spiritual aspect and its corporeal aspect, between its causes and its effects, its rational and its mute, its moving and its stationary, its solid and its growing, its higher and its lower.
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And [the recognition] that the Creator (exalted be He) composed the world by a firmly-knit composition, and arranged it by a tightly-binding arrangement, and parsed it by a clear parsing, and made it a pointer to Himself and an evidence for Himself —
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just as the craftsmanship indicates the craftsman, and the house the builder who built it.
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You ought to know that the whole of the world is composed of corporeal entities and spiritual entities — they have been blended and mixed, and the one has come to be a vessel for the other, like the soul and the body in the living being.
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The traces of wisdom in all of this are of three kinds.
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The first of them are plain, manifest traces that are not hidden from the ignorant, let alone from the discerning,
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such as the motion of the sun's sphere above the earth by day, to illumine the inhabited region, so that the created things derive benefit from it,
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as the holy one said: "The sun rises, they gather and lie down in their dens; man goes out to his work and to his labor until evening. How manifold are Your works, O Lord! In wisdom You have made them all."
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The second kind of the traces of wisdom is hidden from the created things; none knows the rightness of its aspect except the discerning, understanding one,
such as the death common to all human beings, wherein lies the welfare of the world, as our forebears said:
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Our early ones (peace be upon them) said: "And God saw all that He had made, and behold it was very good" — He means by this: behold, death is good.
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And the Wise One said: "I praised the dead who are already dead, more than the living who are still living."
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The third kind of the traces of wisdom is manifest in one aspect and hidden in another aspect, so that the man of little understanding cannot discern it except after careful examination of it and full inquiry into it,
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such as the variation of the year in its conditions through its four seasons, and the like of that.
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The skillful, discerning man extracts from the world the knowledge of its spiritual realities and its subtleties, and makes them a ladder to the inference of the Creator of all (may He be exalted),
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so he binds himself to His obedience and His worship according to the measure of His majesty and His greatness in his heart,
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and in proportion to his discernment of the traces of His providence and His gentleness toward the totality of His creatures, and His favoring of him with abundant blessings, and His exalting of him above them — without any deed preceding from him, nor any merit prior from him, by which he would have deserved the goodly handiwork of God (may He be exalted).
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Then he extracts from the corporeal part of the world only what contains the benefit of his body and the sustenance of his condition in this world, according to need and sufficiency alone,
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and he abandons the rest of the superfluities of this world and its adornments that distract hearts from God (mighty and exalted),
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and he strives in his work for his afterlife and for that to which he will come after his death,
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and he regards this world and its goods as a provision and a viaticum for his return and his afterlife, so he takes from it only what will serve him well at his departure from it.
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But the ignorant man, ignorant of this world and of the traces of wisdom within it, makes it the abode of his eternity and his dwelling-place, so he labors for it to the utmost of his power, and he directs to it all his concern and his toil, supposing that he is acting for the welfare of his own self, yet he does not perceive that his toil and the surplus of what he amasses in it is destined to —
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— another in his lifetime and after his death, while he himself has been wholly heedless of the matter of his next world.
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These two resemble, in that respect, two brothers who inherited from their father a piece of land that required tending and cultivation, so they divided it into two halves, and they had nothing else besides it.
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One of them was sensible and prudent, and the other was the opposite of that.
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The sensible one saw that occupying himself with his land alone would cut him off from contriving for his livelihood and procuring his sustenance, so he hired himself out to work another's land, in order to live from the wage of his labor day by day.
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So whenever he came home from working for another at the close of his day, he would seize the leisure of an hour of it and work his own land with diligence and energy; and whenever there remained over from his wages the provision of a day or more than that, he would leave off working for another during that interval and work his own land with the utmost of his effort and energy; and he continued thus until the working of his land was completed in the most perfect manner that ought to be.
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And when the time of its fruiting and the season of its yield arrived, he gathered it in and amassed it and lived from it the whole of his second year, working his land with wisdom; and he kept increasing its fruit until its yield sufficed for his sustenance, with a surplus remaining to him whereby he could add land to his land.
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But the ignorant brother, when he knew that working his land would cut him off from earning that by which he might be sustained, abandoned it altogether and was heedless of it; then he hired himself out to people in working the land, and took his wage and lived from it and sustained himself by it, gaining from it nothing beyond his sustenance and his bare provision.
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So whenever the provision of his day was left over to him, he made it a day of rest and ease and recreation, and gave no thought to the matter of his land; and he would take to bathing in those hours that used to be left over to him during the days of his labor.
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So his land remained idle, bringing forth nothing; rather thorns overran it, and its hedges fell into ruin, and the torrents carried off its fruits — as the wise man said: "By the field of a slothful man I passed, and by the vineyard..."
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— the man void of understanding; and lo, it was all grown over with thorns, the face of it was covered with nettles, and the stone wall of it was broken down (Proverbs 24:30–31).
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The intelligent man, when he sees this parable with his reason, reflects through it on the matters of his next world — which is his house in true reality — and works for it with all his diligence;
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and when he works for his this-world, he works for it as one who works in the land of another, only according to necessity and need.
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The ignorant one acts in the two matters to the opposite — he toils in the matters of his this-world and is heedless of the matters of his next world —
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like the saying of the Wise One in his reflection upon the ignorant man: "I beheld, and laid it to my heart; I saw and received instruction" (Proverbs 24:32).
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Section 4.
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As for how many kinds of traces of wisdom there are in the created things, by which we may reflect —
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We say: the foundations of wisdom established in the created things, despite the multitude of their kinds and individuals, are seven.
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The first of them: the trace of wisdom that is manifest in the foundations of the world and its elements,
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such as what we observe of the standing of the earth in the center, the water adjoining it above it, the air adjoining the water, and the fire above it,
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all of them by measure and proportion, nothing of which changes; each one of them has kept to its place specific to it and bounded for it,
and the sea is still, the water imprisoned within it, not overstepping its limit even when its waves crowd together and its winds rage,
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as in His saying: "And I brake up for it my decreed place, and set bars and doors, and said, Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further; and here shall thy proud waves be stayed" (Job 38:10–11).
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And he said concerning the standing of the earth and the heaven: "For ever, O LORD, thy word is settled in heaven. Thy faithfulness is unto all generations: thou hast established the earth, and it abideth. They continue this day according to thine ordinances: for all are thy servants" (Psalms 119:89–91).
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and according to what the saint mentioned of this matter in the psalm "Bless the LORD, O my soul" (Psalms 104).
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And the second foundation: the trace
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the trace of the manifest wisdom in the species of the human being, who is the small world — by whom the perfection, order, beauty, ornament, and completion of this world come about, as the Friend (peace be upon him) explained in the Psalm O Lord our Lord (Psalms 8).
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The third pillar: the trace of the manifest wisdom in the composition of the human being and the structure of his body, the faculties of his soul, and the light of the intellect with which God singled him out and made him excel over all the rest of the non-rational animals — and he resembles the great world and is similar to it in its roots and its elements. To this Job pointed in his saying: "Did You not pour me out like milk, and curdle me like cheese? You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews; You granted me life and steadfast love, and Your providence has guarded my spirit" (Job 10:10–12).
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The fourth pillar: the trace of the manifest wisdom in the kinds of all the rest of the animals, both small and great — among them the flying, the swimming, the crawling, and those of four legs — in the variety of the modes of their forms, their natures, their behaviors, their benefits, and their uses in the world, as is mentioned in God's description to Job when He rebuked him: "Who provides for the raven its prey?" (Job 38:41), and the rest of what He described of the classes of the animals of land and sea.
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The fifth pillar: the trace of the manifest wisdom in the plants and the minerals, made ready for the benefits of the human being and the various sorts of his uses in them, in the variety of their natures, their temperaments, and their properties. The ancients described in their books of that according to their apprehension, like the saying of Scripture: "And he spoke of the trees, from the cedar that is in Lebanon to the hyssop that springs out of the wall" (1 Kings 5:13).
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The sixth pillar: the trace of the manifest wisdom in
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the sciences, the crafts, and the activities by which God (great is His name) has inspired the human being for the completion of his welfare and the causes of his sustenance and the rest of his benefits, both general and particular. To these the Book has pointed in His saying: "Who has put wisdom in the inward parts, or who has given the rooster understanding?" (Job 38:36). And the Friend (peace be upon him) said: "For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth knowledge and understanding" (Proverbs 2:6).
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The seventh pillar: the trace of the manifest wisdom in the laying-down of the laws and the ordinances, that one may devote himself through them to God (mighty and exalted), so that whoever cleaves to them attains through them the benefits of this world in the near term and the reward of the world to come in the far term, as the Book says: "Hearken diligently unto Me, and eat that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto Me; hear, and your soul shall live" (Isaiah 55:2–3).
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There follow upon this the various kinds of governance by which the ordering of the management of all the nations and their welfares is maintained — and these take the place of the religious Law in the affairs of this world only.
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And it has been said that the standing of nature relative to the Law is like the standing of the servant relative to his master: the natural powers run in the management of the world only in accordance with what conforms to the Law — like the saying of the Book: "And you shall serve the Lord your God, and He shall bless your bread and your water; and I will take sickness away from your midst" (Exodus 23:25),
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and He said: "If you will diligently hearken to the voice of the Lord your God, and will do that which is right in His eyes, and will give ear to His commandments, and keep all His statutes, I will put none of the diseases upon you which I have put upon the Egyptians; for I am the Lord that heals you" (Exodus 15:26). And there is much like this.
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And it may be that the saying of the Sage, "Wisdom has built her house, she has hewn out her seven pillars" (Proverbs 9:1), intended these seven pillars which we have mentioned.
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So understand that. Section 5.
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As for which of the classes is nearest to us and most incumbent upon us to reflect upon —
we say that reflection upon each one of them, even though
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Thus too it is incumbent upon us to reflect upon them; yet the nearest of them to us and the clearest in our estimation is the trace of the manifest wisdom in the human species, which is the small world, and which is the proximate cause of the being of this world.
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So it is incumbent upon us to consider the beginning of the human being and his coming-into-being, the composition of his parts and the structuring of his limbs, and his benefit from each one of them, and the necessity that calls for his being set and shaped as he is.
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Then we consider his interests in every one of his traits of character, the powers of his soul, the light of his intellect, his substances and his accidents, his hopes, and the end of his affair,
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For when we have come to understand what we have mentioned concerning the human being, much of the secret of this world will become clear to us, since he resembles it.
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One of the sages has said that philosophy is a person's knowledge of himself; by this he meant the knowledge of what we have mentioned concerning the matter of the human being, so that he may distinguish the Creator (mighty and exalted) through the trace of wisdom within him, as Job said: "And from my flesh I shall behold God" (Job 19:26).
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Since that is so, it behooves us to mention, out of all that we have described of the affairs of the human being, a little of every topic — something that will alert the heedless one to what he is obliged to keep ever in remembrance, and that will rouse him to seek out what I have not mentioned,
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so that he may humble himself before his Creator on account of the greatness of His bounty toward him and His beneficence to him, and may magnify his thanks to Him,
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as the saintly one (peace be upon him) said: "I will give thanks to You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; wonderful are Your works, and my soul knows it well. My frame was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, intricately wrought in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance, and in Your book they were all written — the days that were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them" (Psalms 139:14–16).
Now the first thing it behooves you
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My brother, that you should ascend in your thought to the beginning of the human being and to the start of his coming-into-being, you will see that the first of God's favors upon him is his being brought into existence after his nonexistence — namely, his emerging from the rank of the elements to the rank of the plant, then he passes from the rank of the plant to the rank of nourishment, and from it he passes to the rank of the seed and the blood, then he passes from it to the rank of the animal, then he passes from it to the rank of the human being, who is the living, speaking, mortal one — and this is by gradation and transformations and varied causes and corresponding intermediaries, composed with a well-ordered governance and a firm arrangement.
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So when you reflect upon that and behold the trace of bounty and wisdom and power in all of it, reflect and ponder upon the manifest principles of his composition — I mean his soul and his body. You will see the body of the human being composed of opposing elements and differing natures, which the Creator (exalted) joined together by His power and bound together by His wisdom, so that there was arranged from them a body subsisting and unified in its exterior, varied in its natures. Then He coupled with it a spiritual, luminous substance, corresponding to the spirituality of the higher beings — I mean by this substance his soul, which He bound with intermediaries corresponding to both extremes: namely the animal spirit, the innate heat, the blood, the veins, the nerves, and the arteries. And He set for it causes that guard it and preserve it and keep it free from harms — namely the flesh, the bones, the muscle, the skin, the hair, and the nails; and all of them are protections and coverings that guard it from harms.
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Then ponder, my brother, upon the subtlety of the Creator's governance (mighty and exalted) toward the human being, for whom He prepared his mother's womb at the beginning of his affair, that he might be in the most guarded place and the most secure stronghold, where no hand may reach him, and neither heat nor cold may come to him, together with the firm shelter and the fortified covert, together with
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with the well-prepared nutriment. He never ceases growing and increasing until he has the strength to move and turn, with his nourishment ready to him without effort or trouble;
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for it has been prepared in such a place that no one of the human beings can arrive at conveying it to him by any of the means.
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Whenever the growth of his body increases, his nourishment grows in strength accordingly — until a fixed term.
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Then he comes forth from his mother's womb through the narrowest of paths, with no contrivance contrived for his being brought out, no kindly maneuvering used upon him to ease that for him —
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but only by the power of the One who is wise and gentle, the One who is pitying toward His servants —
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as God said to Job about some of the non-rational animals: "Do you know the time when the wild goats of the rock bring forth? Do you watch the calving of the hinds? Can you number the months that they fulfill? And do you know the time when they bring forth?" (Job 39:1–2).
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Then the infant is delivered into this world weak of senses — save the senses of taste and touch —
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and the Creator (exalted be He) prepares for him nutriment in his mother's breasts.
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The blood that was his food in his mother's belly is changed into milk in her breasts, flowing, sweet to drink, like a flowing spring at the hour of his need —
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not too much, lest it become a burden on his mother, flowing without his sucking; nor too little, lest it cause the infant misery in extracting and sucking it from the breast.
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And among the subtleties in this: that God (exalted be He) made the bore of the breast like the puncture of a fine needle —
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not wide, so that it might flow without his sucking, or choke the infant when he sucks at the breast; nor narrower than this, so that its extraction be difficult for the infant by sucking.
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Then his body grows strong, so that he sees the colors and hears the sounds,
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and God casts tenderness and mercy into the hearts of his parents, so that they find his rearing easy and prefer him over themselves in food and drink,
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and the trouble and toil of his rearing become light upon them — his washing, his cleansing, the gentle handling of him, and the warding off of injuries from him, despite the infant's reluctance.
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Then he passes from the rank of infancy to the rank of boyhood, and his parents are not wearied by him, nor do they despair at the abundance of his demands and the smallness of his discernment of what
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they bear of his coarseness and his expense and his trouble — rather, their concern and anxiety for him grows greater in their souls, until he reaches the full strength of his powers.
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He learns speech in order and gradation; the powers of his senses grow strong, and the powers of his soul, so that he becomes receptive to knowledge and understanding. He discriminates some sensible objects from others by means of his bodily senses, and some intelligible objects from others by means of his spiritual senses — as the Friend said: "For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth knowledge and understanding" (Proverbs 2:6).
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And among the great blessings upon the human being is that in his state of infancy he does not reason and does not discriminate good and evil — for had his intellect and discernment been complete at his upbringing, so that he discriminated the bounty of people over him in their being self-sufficient, in the swiftness of their movement and their cleanliness, and saw his own state to the contrary, he would have died of grief and care and chagrin.
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And among the wonders in the matter of his weeping is that the infant benefits by it — according to what the most excellent of physicians have claimed, that in the brains of infants there is a moisture which, if it remained in its state, would bring upon them evil afflictions; so the weeping dissolves that moisture from their brains, and they are kept safe from its ill effects.
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Then, among the great kindness of the Creator (exalted be He) toward the human being is in the replacement of his teeth, one after another, so that eating may not become difficult for him during the whole period of the growth of what has fallen out of them.
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Then diseases and the painful accidents befall him, so that he may be set apart from the world and not be ignorant of its condition — lest he grow fond of it, and his desires for it take possession of him, and he become like the beast that does not reason and does not understand; and the Friend said: "Do not be like a horse or a mule, without understanding" (Psalms 32:9).
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Then the human being reflects with the sight of his heart, and considers the benefits of the members of his body and the aspects of their usefulness in each member of them: the two hands for grasping and pushing away, the two feet for rising up, the two eyes for finding the way, the two ears for hearing, the nose for smelling, the tongue for speech, the mouth for eating, the teeth for gnawing, the stomach for digestion, the liver for refining the nourishment, and the passages
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the channels for the discharge of the excess matter; the receptacles for carrying it; the heart, the dwelling of the innate heat and the spring of life; the brain, the dwelling of the spiritual powers and the spring of sensation, the root of the nerve; the genitals, for the upholding of the offspring. And so for the rest of the members of the body — and what is hidden from us of their benefits is more than what is manifest to us.
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The like of this becomes evident to one who reflects on the inside of the body, and the operations of nature within it when the food enters it and is divided to every part of the body's parts; and he sees, of the traces of wisdom, what binds him to praise of his Creator and thanks to Him — as the Friend said: "All my bones shall say: Lord, who is like You?" (Psalms 35:10).
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For the food passes to the stomach through a channel made ready upon a straight line, in which there is neither curving nor crookedness — and that is the gullet; then the stomach grinds it more thoroughly than the first grinding which the molar tooth had performed,
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then it sends it on to the liver through fine veins joining the two, which have been made like a strainer for the nutriment, so that nothing coarse of it should reach the liver;
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and it turns it into blood, divides it over the body, and conveys it into all its parts through channels made ready for that — like the watercourses that are prepared for water — and what remains of the excess matter passes off into channels that have been appointed for it:
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whatever is of the kind of yellow bile flows to the gall-bladder; whatever is of the kind of black bile flows to the spleen; whatever is of moisture and wetness flows to the lung; and whatever is of the watery part of the blood flows to the bladder.
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So reflect, my brother, on the wisdom of the Creator (exalted be He) in the composition of your body, and His setting these members of it in their places to carry off that excess matter, lest it spread through the body altogether and make it sick.
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Then reflect on the fashioning of the instruments of the voice and the points of articulation of speech: the larynx is like a pipe for the issuing of the voice, while the tongue, the two lips, and the teeth are for the articulating of the letters and the tunes.
And in these members there are benefits
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—as something other. For in the larynx the breath passes to the lungs; by the tongue tastes are tasted, and there is in it besides that an aid for the swallowing of food and drink; by the molars the food is chewed; by the two lips the drink is sipped, so that what flows from them is by intention and measure. And so too in the rest of the members there are benefits, some of which are known to us and some unknown to us.
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Then reflect, O my brother, on the four faculties that are in the body and their actions within it:
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the attractive faculty is the one that requires the arrival of the nourishment and its acquisition in the stomach;
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the retentive faculty is the one that holds the food and keeps it in the stomach until nature performs its action upon it;
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the digestive faculty is the one that cooks it, extracts its pure essence, and disperses it through the body;
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and the expulsive faculty is the one that sends down the residue left over after the digestive faculty has taken its need from the nourishment.
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So consider how these faculties were appointed in the body to attend to it with what is for its welfare.
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Thus they became like a house belonging to the king, in which are attendants and stewards charged with the house:
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one to procure the needs of the household and bring them to the king's storekeeper;
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a second steward to receive what the first brings in and store it in the house until it is made ready and fit;
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a third steward to treat what has been stored, set it right, prepare it, and distribute it among the household;
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and a fourth steward to clear away whatever is in the house of filth and refuse and to remove it from it.
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Then ponder the psychic faculties and their bearing upon the benefits of man, such as thought, memory, forgetting, shame, intellect, and speech.
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For consider: were man to be deprived, out of these qualities, of memory alone, how would his condition be,
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and how much disorder would befall him in his affairs were he not to remember what is owed to him and what he owes, what he took and what he gave, what he saw and what he heard, what he said and what was said to him, and did not recall—
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[He would not distinguish] the one who treated him well from the one who treated him ill, nor what benefits him from what harms him; moreover he would not find his way along a road even though he had traveled it many times, nor would he retain a piece of knowledge even though he had studied it his whole life long.
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He would not profit from experience, nor measure anything by what has passed,
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nor judge what is to be by what has been; rather he would deserve to be stripped of humanity altogether.
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And among the virtues of forgetting is that, were it not for it, no one would be consoled after a calamity, nor would any of the joys of this world divert him from it, nor would he take pleasure in what gladdens him when he recalled the misfortunes of this world, nor hope for a respite from an envier, nor for heedlessness on the part of a ruler.
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Do you not see how memory and forgetting have been placed in the human being, though the two are different and opposed, and how He has set for him in each one of them sorts of benefit?
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Then reflect on the creation of shame, with which the human being has been singled out — how great is its measure and how immense its benefit and its usefulness; for were it not for it, no guest would be honored, no promise fulfilled, no needs met, nor would the good be carried out and the ugly avoided in any matter at all — so much so that many of the religious-legal precepts are instituted only on account of shame; for most of the mass of people, were it not for shame, would not observe a duty toward their own fathers, let alone toward anyone else.
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Nor would they discharge a trust, nor refrain from an indecency; and whoever commits any of the things we have mentioned does so only after stripping off from himself the garment of shame, as the prophet (peace be upon him) said: "They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush" (Jer. 6:15), and he said: "but the unjust knoweth no shame" (Zeph. 3:5).
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And it is among the wonders, O my brother, that He provided the human being with shame before people — because of the benefits in it that we have described, and because of what is even greater than that, which our description cannot encompass — yet He did not place in his nature shame before God (mighty and exalted), who is forever watching over him, so that he would not be compelled to obey Him, which would weaken the basis of his deserving reward for his obedience; rather, shame before God is incumbent upon us by way of reflection and knowledge of what we owe Him of
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obedience, and He has informed us of His being aware of our outward deeds and our inner thoughts, as in His saying: "Be ashamed and confounded for your ways, O house of Israel" (Ezekiel 36:32).
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As for the greatness of God's bounty (mighty and exalted) upon us in the intellect and the faculty of discernment with which He singled us out from all the other kinds of mankind — the benefit of that to us in the governance of our bodies and the ordering of our movements is not hidden, in contrast to one among us who has lost that through some affliction befalling his brain.
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As for the qualities that accrue to us by reason of the intellect, they are very many.
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Among these is the inference by means of it that we have a Creator: wise, single, eternal-and-self-sufficient, one, everlasting, powerful — whom neither time nor place encompasses, exalted above the descriptions of created things, and lofty above the imaginings of existent beings — merciful, generous, bountiful, who resembles nothing and whom nothing resembles.
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And among these too: by means of it we apprehend the wisdom, the power, and the mercy diffused throughout the world, and the obligation of obedience to Him and of worship of the One who is worthy of it, on account of His all-embracing and His particular bounty.
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And by the intellect there is established as valid for us the truthful Book of God, revealed to His messenger (peace be upon him), by which He has imposed obligations upon us.
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And in proportion to a person's intellect and his discernment falls the reckoning and the inquiry against him from God, exalted be His mention.
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And whoever has lost his intellect — there fall away from him the excellences of humanity altogether, together with their obligations, their reward, and their punishment.
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And among the qualities of the intellect is that by it a person apprehends all his perceptibles, both the sensed and the intelligible; and by it he sees what is hidden from his bodily senses among visible phenomena — such as the moving of the shadow, and the effect of a single drop of water upon hard rock; and by it he distinguishes between truth and falsehood, between the superior and the deficient, between good and evil, between the beautiful and the ugly, and between the necessary, the possible, and the impossible.
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And by it he subjugates all the kinds of animals to his interests and his benefits; and by it he discerns the places
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the stars and their distances, the motions of the spheres, the geometric proportions and measures, the figures of logical demonstrations, and the rest of the sciences and crafts whose mention would be long.
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And likewise the rest of the human's traits: if you reflect upon them, you will find them to be at the utmost of benefit and advantage to him, just as we described concerning the intellect.
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Then reflect upon what God has graciously bestowed upon the human in speech and the ordering of language, by which he expresses what is in his soul and his mind, and by which he understands from another —
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for the tongue is the pen of the heart, the interpreter of the soul, and the emissary of the mind; and were it not for speech, the human's intimacy with those he keeps company with would be severed, and he would be like a beast.
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By speech the differences in rank among people become manifest, and by it covenants are contracted among them, and between them and God, and between them and His friends,
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and by speech slips are amended and forgiveness is sought for sins, and it is the strongest indication of people's virtues and their vices.
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And it has been said: the human is but the heart and the tongue; and by it the definition of the human is completed — I mean speech — since the definition of the human is "a living, speaking, mortal being," and by it he is distinguished from the beasts.
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Then reflect upon the excellences of the forms of script and writing, by which the traces of the past and present are recorded for those who come after, and the reports of the absent are conveyed to those present, and the conditions of those far from home to their kin,
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in the conveying of which to them there may lie their very life and their rescue from calamities and destructions; and by it the sciences are made to endure in books, and by it the meanings scattered in the breasts are set in order, and by it people record the dealings that have passed between them.
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and trade, debt, the buying of land, marriage-contract, divorce, and manumission — and the matter is greater than we can encompass.
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And among the perfection of the blessing upon the human in it is that He has prepared for him a palm and fingers by which he masters drawing, writing, inscribing, the striking of sparks for fire, and the rest of subtle activities and crafts — apart from the other species of the human animal, since these have no need of them.
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And I say: there is no organ whose aspects of benefit I have mentioned except that the trace of wisdom in its composition, its placement, and its assembly is manifest to whoever understands it — and it is strong in testimony and clear in indication of the care of the Creator, exalted be He, for us.
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Galen has expounded this for us in the Book of the Uses of the Organs with an eloquent exposition; and were we to aim at expounding that with respect to a single organ alone, our discourse would carry us beyond the bound of our purpose. In what we have adduced there is some measure of arousal for whoever is rightly guided to that in which lies his deliverance, if God wills.
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As for reflection upon the rest of the kinds of animals, their governance, and their sustenance — this is not hidden from whoever contemplates them and understands the traces of wisdom in them. For this reason you see Scripture repeating them when it mentions the wonders of the Creator, exalted be He, as in what He said to Job: "Who provides for the raven its prey, when its young cry out to God"; and it said: "He gives to the beast its food, to the young ravens that call"; and much like it.
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Likewise, when you look at the coursing of the diverse spheres with diverse motions and diverse lights, by which the state of the whole is set in order, you see of the traces of power and wisdom that which the human's imagination cannot encompass, and the description of which his tongue is too weak to render — as in the saying of the friend [of God]: "The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament tells the work of His hands," and the rest of the psalm; and he said: "When I behold Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars which..."
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—which You have established.
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Among the most wondrous of the corporeal creatures of the Creator (exalted be He) upon which the sight of man falls is the heaven,
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for wherever he stands upon the earth he sees half of the sphere that surrounds the earth,
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and when the observer looks upon it reflectively, he sees that the One who created it by His will is without limit in His power, His wisdom, and His majesty;
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for when we are shown something of the traces of the buildings of the ancients, we marvel at their capacity for the like of it,
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and it points us to the strength of their bodies and the loftiness of their resolve in fortifying themselves;
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so when this slight glance and paltry trace—which exceeds our own work only by a little—looms great in our eyes,
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how much more ought there to loom great the Maker of the earth and the heaven and what is between them—without effort, without toil, without weariness, without travail,
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neither out of anything, nor upon anything, nor by anything, but rather by His will and His volition,
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as in His saying: "By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all their host by the breath of His mouth" (Psalms 33:6).
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And among the sum of the favors toward man is that, whenever you reflect upon the traces of wisdom in created things, you find them—together with their witness to the Creator (exalted be He) of His lordship and His oneness—never devoid of there being in them, for man, some aspect of benefit and some intent of welfare,
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except that some of it is clear and some of it is hidden.
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An instance of this is light and darkness: for the benefits of light are evident and apparent, not hidden,
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but as for darkness, its benefits are hidden, because of people's dread of it and the cessation of their labors and movements when it sets in;
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and were it not for the darkness of the night, the bodies of most animals would break down through the unbrokenness of their toil, the persistence of their labor, and the length of their movement.
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And by the night one part of time is set off from another, and by it are determined the unknown durations and the length of life-spans as against their shortness.
And were the state to remain perpetually in a single form, there would be no commandment bound to a time, such as the Sabbath.
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and the festival, and the fast; and there would be no appointed time among people up to a fixed moment; and ignorance of most of the things contained in time; and the digestion of food in the stomach of any animal would not have been completed in its fullness.
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Since the human had need of light by night to do some of his works in it, and that the sick one might be cheered by it at night, God compensated him for it with the light of fire, that he might employ it by night whenever he wills and extinguish it whenever he wills.
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And among the wonders is that the color of the sky is among the things that strengthen the sight — I mean, its inclining toward blackness.
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And among its special properties is that it gathers the sight and strengthens it; and were its color white it would harm the sight of the animal and weaken the power of the eye. And likewise is the secret of wisdom in all the rest of created things.
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And among the great blessings of God upon the human is that he is held in awe by all the rest of the harmful animals, as Scripture said: "And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth" (Genesis 9:2) — so much so that the infant is kept safe from the cat and the mouse and the like, while when the man dies he is not kept safe from what we have mentioned of the animals, as our early sages said, peace be upon them: "A one-day-old infant, alive, needs no guarding from the mice; Og king of Bashan, dead, needs guarding from the mice — as it is said: And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth."
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And among what you are obliged to understand from the totality of created things — their highest and their lowest, their subtle and their grand — is the hidden meaning by which the order of the whole and its completeness subsist, which is not grasped by the bodily senses: namely the motion that necessarily belongs to every composite thing. No one of the bodily senses grasps it; rather the intellect grasps it through the mediation of the moving thing which the senses do grasp. And were it not for motion, the being of nothing would be completed of
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the coming-to-be of any of the existent things would not have been completed, nor their corruption.
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Some of the philosophers have said: the spirit of natures is motion.
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When you have understood the secret of motion, and grasped the concept of its true reality and its spirituality, and known that it is among the subtleties of divine wisdom; and discriminated the strength of the Creator's providence (exalted be He) over creation — then you will become verified-of-the-reality that all your motions are bridled by the will of the Creator (exalted be He), and His management, and His wish — the small and the great of them, the hidden and the manifest — save what He has entrusted to you of the choice of obedience or transgression.
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When you have verified-of-the-reality of this, examine your soul at every motion you move with, and remember God's bridle (mighty and exalted) upon you in it; and bind yourself to shame before Him, and to watchful awareness of Him, and to submission to His judgment — be satisfied with His decree, and you shall arrive at His satisfaction, and the outcome of your matters shall be made beautiful — as the Friend (peace be upon him) said: "And the one who trusts in the Lord — kindness shall encompass him" (Psalms 32:10).
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And among the matters of the world by which it is fitting for you to take a lesson is to attend to the outcomes of affairs that turn difficult for us and that turn easy for us — in this you shall see a most wondrous wonder, for many a thing that befalls us with our reluctance, we come to praise the outcome of its matter, and the reverse as well.
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And it has been told that a band of travelers spent the night at the foot of a wall, and a dog came and urinated upon one of them, so he rose to his feet to wash himself of the urine; and when he had drawn away from his companions, the wall collapsed upon them and they died, while he was saved.
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And likewise, a man was walking in a caravan, and he had need to relieve himself, so he drew away from it to attend to his need; and while he was in a gap of the road, when he had finished relieving himself, he dozed off without intending it, then awoke
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He awoke after an hour, was dismayed, and regretted his sleep; he set out toward the caravan, hoping to catch up with it.
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He caught up with it at the place where he had parted from it — and behold, it had been slaughtered: bandits had fallen upon it, and despoiled it, and killed them.
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Many things like this and the opposite occur.
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And among the greatest of what is fitting that you reflect upon is the universality of sustenance for the animal of the earth and its plants — like the rains in their time of need and their falling in their seasons —
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as the Book says: "Are there any among the vanities of the gentiles that can cause rain? Or can the heavens give showers? Are You not He, O Lord our God? We hope in You" (Jeremiah 14:22).
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And He said: "They did not say in their hearts: Let us now fear the Lord our God, who gives the rain — the former rain and the latter rain — in its season, who keeps for us the appointed weeks of the harvest" (Jeremiah 5:24).
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The Book magnifies the matter of it greatly in its saying: "Who does great things beyond searching out, wonders without number, who gives rain upon the face of the earth, and sends water upon the face of the fields, to set up on high those that are low, and those that mourn for safety are exalted" (Job 5:9-11).
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And among the wonders, of the causes of foods from the grains, is that a single grain bears a thousand grains and more, if it is preserved from injuries.
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It has been said that there is found in a single grain of wheat three hundred ears, and in every ear more than twenty grains of wheat - in some places.
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We find the great fruits whose root is a single seed and whose growth is from one - according to the analogy of multiplication that I have mentioned.
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Glory be to the Wise One, the Sustainer, who appoints great things to come about from the subtlest of causes and the weakest of them - as the Book says: "And actions are weighed" (1 Samuel 2:3).
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As for the particularities of sustenance for the individuals of the kinds of animals, that is more than our description can encompass,
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and the discerning one, when he reflects and grasps its causes, perceives therein the wisdom of the Creator's governance,
and concerning it the saint says: "They all wait upon You, to give them their food in its season; You give to them, they gather it; You open Your hand" (Psalms 145:15-16).
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they are satisfied with good (Psalms 104:28).
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And He said: "You open Your hand and satisfy every living thing's desire" (Psalms 145:16).
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I shall enlarge upon this matter in the Gate of Reliance on God, God (exalted be He) willing.
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And among the greatest of blessings God has bestowed upon the human, and the strongest in indication of Him, is the Law revealed to the Messenger (peace be upon him); and the appearing of the signs by his hand, and the breaking-of-the-ordinary, and the altering of natures, and the showing-forth of miracles — for the verifying of the Creator and the certainty of His messenger —
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as it is said: "And Israel saw the great hand which the Lord did against the Egyptians, and the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in Moses His servant" (Exodus 14:31);
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and He said: "You have been shown to know that the Lord is God, there is none other besides Him" (Deuteronomy 4:35);
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and He said: "Out of the heavens He made you hear His voice, that He might discipline you; and upon the earth He made you see His great fire, and you heard His words out of the midst of the fire" (Deuteronomy 4:36).
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If, in our time, anyone seeks the like of these traces — let him look with the eye of fairness at our state among the nations from the time of the exile, the ordering of our matters among them, despite our being against them in secret and openly, and their knowledge of this from us;
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he will see that our state, perhaps, has equaled their state in foods and sustenance, and perhaps our state has been better than theirs in times of war and dissension —
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so that you see [the nations'] peasantry and the lowly populace of their countryside more miserable by far than our middle ones and our lowliest.
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This is on the strength of the assurance the Creator (exalted be He) has given us: "And yet, even when they are in the land of their enemies, I shall not despise them, nor shall I abhor them" (Leviticus 26:44);
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and Ezra said: "Though we are slaves, yet our God has not forsaken us in our slavery" (Ezra 9:9);
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and the Friend said: "If it had not been the Lord who was for us, let Israel now say — when men rose up against us…" (Psalms 124:1–2), and the rest of the Psalm.
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I shall expand in the Gate of Binding-Oneself-to-Obedience-to-God on the mention of the bounty of His blessing upon us in the Law He laid down for us — what shall suffice, God willing.
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And among what is fitting should occur to your mind — and you should reflect on it — is the gathering of the word of the multitude of the people and the binding-together
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their hearts, despite the great divergence of their characters, upon the setting of one man among them over them,
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they cleave to his obedience and halt at his command and his prohibition, and they revere his power,
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so he preserves them and has compassion upon them and deals justly among them, and brings them upon that in which lies the welfare of them all,
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so that their affairs are not neglected and the enemy gains no mastery over them.
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And were each one of the people to look to himself in repelling harm from himself, they would not agree upon the building of a fortress nor a wall, and their conditions would be ruined.
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Together with this, the friend over the people — with his management of them — preserves the impressions of the Laws, and brings the people upon the just customs and the traces of the excellent beauty:
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he is the servant of the Law and the keeper of just polity — by these two his matter is stable and his kingship endures,
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as it is said: "Kindness and truth preserve the king" (Proverbs 20:28);
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and our early ones said: "Pray for the welfare of the kingdom, for were it not for the fear of it, every man would swallow his fellow alive" (m. Avot 3:2).
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And among what is fitting for you, O my brother, that you reflect upon and comprehend of the traces of high wisdom and consummate providence:
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people's convention to buy and sell with silver and gold, and their striving to accumulate them — a subtle gift of God to them, so that by these two the maintenance of their state may stand.
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Yet need is not satisfied by these in themselves: for he who is overtaken by the pain of hunger and thirst, lacking food and water — the abundance of these does not benefit him, nothing of them avails him.
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Likewise, if there is pain in one of his members, he is not treated with silver or gold.
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Indeed, many other minerals are used in many kinds of treatment — and seldom does it happen by silver or gold.
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It is on this account that you see them in abundance among the people from the angle that they are never without them — but they are scarce with most of them:
had they been existent in abundance among all of them, no need of theirs would have been met by them. So they are
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[They are] scarce from one aspect and abundant from another, and likewise they are precious from one aspect and lowly from another, since there is no benefit in them in themselves; and this is among the highest providence of the exalted Wisdom toward them.
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Then look, after this, at the matters by which the maintenance of bodies and their abiding in their state and their growing to the term of their lives are sustained.
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You will find them, in abundance and scarcity, according to the strength of the need for them.
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The stronger the need for a thing is, the more readily-found and existing it is; the more endurance and patience are possible for a thing, the harder it is to find and the rarer in being.
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The example of this: since one cannot endure without the air one breathes — even for an hour or more, in any way — the Creator (mighty and exalted) brought it into existence in the world and made it readily-available, so that it is not impossible for anyone, wherever he be, at any time and in any place.
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As for water — though it be needed like the air, except that endurance without it is more possible than without air — the Creator (exalted be He) released it upon the face of the earth, and gathered it in a particular place to which animals can go: it is not impossible for them, except that it is not in every place as the air is; and for most of the people it is sought-out at a price, which is not the case for air.
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It is available to some of the animals more than to others, while the air is equal in being-found and in apprehension by all of them, always in one state.
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Then, since food too is needed — except that endurance without it, and substitution for it, are more possible than for air or water by far — its apprehension is more difficult and its being-found is rarer than water by far. Yet, in spite of this, it is abundantly existent, not absolutely impossible to people.
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And likewise the causes of clothing — out of furs and growth-products — are rarer than food, and slower in apprehension save after a stretch of time, on account of the possibility of endurance without them, and of subsistence...
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of it with little, over a long span of time, more than of food.
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As for precious stones, silver, gold, and the rest of the minerals — since they are of less need in themselves and more remote in benefit except by convention regarding them, there is not found of them among the generality of people what is found of food with a single one of them; and that is for the reason I described, of the dispensability of them.
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So glory be to the Creator, the Wise, the Gracious to His servants, the Merciful upon them, intense in care for their welfare — there is no god besides Him — as in His saying to Jonah: "You took pity on the gourd, for which you did not labor and which you did not raise, and shall I not have pity on Nineveh, the great city?" (Jonah 4:10-11). And the Friend, peace be upon him, said: "The Lord is good to all, and His mercies are over all His works" (Psalms 145:9).
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Section 6.
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He said: As for the corrupters of reflection and their concomitants —
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I say that the totality of the corrupters of tawḥīd whose mention preceded in the First Gate — all of these are corrupters of reflection.
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The three obstacles we mentioned at the head of this gate are also among the totality of its corrupters.
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And among them is wonderment at the blessings of God (mighty and exalted) — so that the ignorant, the dim-witted, supposes that he is worthy of them and of what is greater than they; he does not reflect on the blessings of God, nor bind upon himself thanks and praise to the Creator for them. Concerning his like the Wise One said: "Every one proud of heart is an abomination to the Lord" (Proverbs 16:5).
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As for the concomitants of reflection: of these is the human's collecting of God's blessings upon him, and his binding-himself-to-obedience on account of them; and of these is the human's perpetually turning over the traces of the Creator's wisdom (exalted be He) in his own soul — so that he is never empty of cogitation upon them and inquiry into them in everything that comes upon him among sensible and intelligible objects. He never ceases to see a new trace each day, as the Friend said: "Day unto day pours forth speech" (Psalms 19:3).
And among the totality of what is fitting for you to know, O my brother, is that
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When you read what I have alerted you to in this gate, [know] that it is little out of much that you may attain by your understanding of the secrets of the wisdom, if you uncover them through the purity of your mind and the clarity of your heart.
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And when you reach of that the utmost extent that is within your capacity, it behooves you to know that all you have apprehended of the wisdom of the Creator (exalted) and His power in this world is no portion at all of His power and His wisdom —
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for there appears only what necessity has called for, for the sake of man alone — not according to the scope of His power, since it has no limit.
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So let there be in your soul, of His majesty and the fear of Him and the magnitude of His power, according to this — not according to what you understand of Him alone.
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Rather, your own example in the world is like a child born in the king's dungeon: the king attended to his matter, and commanded for him all of his welfares, and dealt subtly with him until he grew up and reasoned. He has no knowledge of anything but the dungeon and what is in it.
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The king's messenger used to come back and forth to him with all that he needed of lamp and food and drink and clothing; and he made known to him that he is the king's servant, and that the dungeon, with all it contains and with all the food the messenger brings to it, belongs to the king.
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Then [the messenger] bound him to thanking and praising him; so he said: "Glory be to the master of this dungeon, who has made me his servant, and singled me out by the whole of his blessings, and made me his concern and his occupation."
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The messenger said to him: "Why do you speak so? You err! For this dungeon alone is not the kingdom of the king. In the breadth of his lands are dungeons like this — innumerable in multitude.
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So too, you are not his servant alone — for his servants are more than can be numbered.
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And likewise: what you have experienced of his blessing and his bounty has no measure compared to his blessing upon others; and likewise his occupation with your matter has no measure compared to his occupation with what is besides you."
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The child said: "I have no knowledge of what you have mentioned. I have understood the matter of the king only according to what I have experienced of his kingship and his blessing — only that."
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The messenger said to him: "Say: Glory be to the exalted King, whose kingdom has no end, and no limit—
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no limit to His blessing and His bounty; no measure for me amid the magnitude of His armies, no value for my matter amid the majesty of His power, glorious is He.
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The child understood, from the matter of the king, what he had been ignorant of; magnified his power in his own soul; held his command in awe; reckoned his blessing great, and what had come to him from the king's side, on account of the greatness of His estate; reckoned the value of the child within his kingdom slight, and his gifts abundant.
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And you, O my brother, are the like of this regarding the sphere encompassing the earth — for we do not reason what is in the least patch of the earth, much less the whole of it, much less what is beyond the sphere.
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So comprehend, O my brother, this parable, and reflect by it; and grasp the concept of the Creator (mighty and exalted) according to this — so that there grow great within your soul that with which He has graced you of His blessings and bounties in His regard for you among the totality of His created things.
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Look upon His Book, His command, and His prohibition with the eye of His majesty; and bring before your mind the magnitude of your dread and your reverence for whatever may come to you of a blessing from the one above you among people —
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for according to the measure of the bounty of his rank above your rank, and his freedom-from-need-of-you, will be the measure of the majesty of his blessing in your soul.
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So likewise it shall be, for His command and His prohibition, according to that — a measure in your soul, in your striving, and in your effort for Him. So comprehend and understand — you shall hit the mark, God willing.
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May God set us and you among those granted success in His obedience, those who discriminate the various kinds of His blessing — by His mercy and His pity, exalted is He.