Ghazzali's Alchemy of Happiness. Ill 



of the man who ate him, will that portion rise with the 

 eater or with the man who was eaten ? . . . 



They say, moreover, that man is created from seed, that 

 seed is derived from food, and that food is derived from 

 the milk, the fat or the flesh of an animal : now with which 

 of all these will the ingredient rise up ? Again, suppose the 

 hand of a thief has been cut off, and he afterwards leads a 

 life of good works and enters Paradise. Must he enter 

 Paradise, where nothing maimed or defective can enter, with- 

 out his hand, or will he enter with his hand, notwithstand- 

 ing his good works were not performed when he possessed 

 that hand ? The source of all these perverse speculations is 

 in the pretence of those who say that in the day of assem- 

 bly, the mould reappears and that the spirit follows in its 

 train, that if it was not for the mould there would be no 

 semblance of man, and that the permanency of the spirit 

 results from its connection with the body. 



If, seeker, you say that the well known language of 

 the wise in the law and in discourse is, that at death a man 

 becomes ntm-existent, and that he exists afterwards in the 

 resurrection with this identical body, and that our lan- 

 guage contradicts theirs, we reply. He who merely follows 

 in the track of the language used by others, will never ac- 

 quire a knowledge of the truth. However, the words you 

 have cited are not those, either of people of intelligence or 

 of imitators. For the intelligent and learned know that 

 the body is not annihilated at death, but that the ma- 

 terials of which it is composed are separated, and that it is 

 this separation which they call death. The imitator has 

 likewise heard from the doctors of the law, that the spirit 

 lives eternally after death. 



It is well known that spirits are divided into two classes, 

 in one of which all blessed spirits are embraced and in the 

 other all miserable spirits. With respect to the blessed spi- 

 rits God says, " Think not that those who have been slain on 



