88 Ghazzali's Alchemy of Happiness. 



But it is not possible to be totally exempt from sensuous 

 passions, for if the body should be deprived of food and 

 drink for example, it would perish. There is occasion 

 therefore for making distinctions between our acts ; but 

 these distinctions, the individual is not capable of making for 

 himself, because the animal soul necessarily casts a veil 

 over the truth and inclines it to vanity. On this account 

 we are obliged to follow after and imitate others — such 

 persons as the prophets. They have been purified and 

 enlightened by the eternal Truth Himself, and have been 

 sent forth to communicate precepts and laws, and to de- 

 cide upon all circumstances. Every one is therefore bound 

 to imitate them within the limits of the law, and in the 

 regulation of his moral conduct, that he may attain felicity 

 and be preserved from danger of eternal destruction. 



Those careless and indifferent persons, seeker after 

 the divine mysteries, who from ignorance, stupidity and 

 sin have turned away from God and his prophet, and have 

 wandered from the path of religion, may be arranged in 

 seven classes. 



To the first class belong those who do not believe in 

 God. They had desired to find him out in his essence and 

 attributes, by speculations and fancies, by comparisons and 

 illustrations. And because they have not succeeded in 

 understanding him, they have referred his acts and his gov- 

 ernment to the stars and to nature. They have fancied that 

 the soul of man and of other animals, and this wonderful 

 world with its marvellous arrangements came of themselves, 

 and that they are eternal ; or that they are effects from na- 

 tural causes, and that there is no creator beyond the sphere 

 of the world. This class of people resembles the man who 

 seeing a writing, fancies that it was written of itself, and 

 infers that it was not written by a penman or by a super- 

 natural power : or else that it is eternal and that no one 

 knows whence it comes. It is impossible to recover from 



