intention and will and makes known knowledge and wisdom, and an ordering and beautifying it is impossible to attribute to chance. There is in everthing an art so delicate, a wisdom so fine, an adornment so elevated, an organization so compassionate, and situation so sweet that it is clearly understood that behind the veil of the Unseen is a craftsman who wants to make his art appreciated, attract the gazes of the attentive, and please his artefacts and observers; who wants to make himself known and acquainted and loved through displaying numerous skills and perfections in each work of his art, and to make himself praised and applauded. He bestows on conscious creatures in order to please them and make them happy and friends of himself, every sort of delicious bounty from unexpected places in a way it is impossible to attribute to chance.

Also to be observed are a generous treatment, a mutual acquaintance and friendly dialogue with the tongue of disposition, and a compassionate response to supplication which make perceived a profound compassion and elevated mercy. That is to say, the bestowal of bounty and giving of pleasure which are observed behind the making known and loved, which are as clear as the sun, arise from a genuine wish to be compassionate and powerful desire to be merciful. And this powerful desire in One Absolutely Self-Sufficient Who has no need of anything demonstrates certainly an utterly perfect pre-eternal, everlasting, peerless Beauty the nature and reality of which necessitate its wanting to be manifested and to see itself in mirrors. In order to display and see itself in various mirrors, this Beauty has taken on the form of compassion and mercy; then in the mirrors of conscious beings has assumed the state of bestowal and munificence; then has taken the form of making itself known and loved; and then bestowed the light of adorning creatures and making them beautiful.

Second Point: Mankind’s genuine, intense, and powerful love of God, and especially that of its elevated classes and of innumerable persons whose paths are all different, points self-evidently to a peerless beauty; indeed it testifies to it. Yes, such a love looks only to such a beauty and necessitates it; such passion demands such loveliness. Indeed, all the praise offered by beings verbally and through the tongue of disposition looks to that pre-eternal Beauty and goes to it. In the view of lovers like Shams-i Tabrizi, all the