The Words | GLEAMS | 753
(724-779)

The exclusivist mentality arises from love of self. It later becomes a sickness and leads to dispute.

The multiplication of ills and cures is right, and right too multiplies. The increase in the varieties of needs and foods is right, and right becomes various.

The increase in capacities and education is right, and right too multiplies. A single substance is both poison and the antidote.

The truth is not fixed in secondary matters; it is relative and compound in accordance with different temperaments.28

The temperaments of the authoritative scholars imparted a share to it, and it was realized and compounded accordingly; the founders of the schools made judgements in absolute, unspecific terms.

They left it to the various temperaments and their leanings to specify the limits of their schools; but bigoted attachment to them was the cause of generalization.

The partisanship arising from this led to dispute. The profound rifts between the social classes before Islam,

And their extraordinary distance from each other, demanded a great many prophets at any one time, and a variety of sacred laws, and numerous schools.

Islam caused a revolution among mankind, and men drew closer to each other. It reduced to one the sacred law, and there was one Prophet.

But the levels of men were not the same, so the schools of law multiplied.

When a single training and instruction is sufficient, the schools will unite.

* * *

There is Great Wisdom in the Creation and Combining of Opposites: The Sun and a Minute Particle Are Equal in the Hand of Power

O Brother with an alert heart! Power is manifested in the combining of opposites. Do you know why there is pain in pleasure, evil within good, ugliness within beauty, harm within benefit, revenge within beneficence, fire within light?

It is so that the relative truths may be established; that there may be many things within one thing, and that they may find existence and become apparent.

Swift motion makes a point into a line. Its being spun at speed makes a flash of light, a luminous circle.


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28. For further explanation, see, the Conclusion of the Twenty-Seventh Word, pp. 500-2 of the present work. [Tr.]

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