Wastefulness Leads To Squandering, Squandering Leads To Poverty

My wasteful brother! Two morsels which are the same as regards nutrition, one costing one kurush, the other, costing ten,

Are equal both before they enter the mouth, and after they have passed down the gullet. Only for a few seconds in the mouth do they give pleasure to the heedless.

They have different tastes, which always deceives it, that sense of taste; it is a doorkeeper and inspector for the body and stomach.

The taste's effect is negative, not positive; its function, only to tip the doorkeeper and gratify it; to give pleasure to that senseless one!

To confuse it in its true duty, to give it eleven kurush rather than one, is a satanic habit.

The most prodigal of wastefulness, the worst form of extravagance, is one sort, one way: so don't seek it.

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The Sense of Taste Is a Telegraphist; Don't Seduce It By Gratifying It²⁹

Divine dominicality, wisdom, and grace, made two centres with the mouth and nose, placing within them a frontier post, and correspondents.

In the microcosm, God made the blood-vessels telephones, and the nerves, telegraphs.

That True Provider made the sense of smell a telephone, and posted the sense of taste to the telegraph. Out of His mercy, he put an instruction sheet on the food: flavour, and colour, and smell.

Thus, these three attributes are proclamations, invitations, permits, and heralds on the part of the food; with them it invites the needy and its customers.

He gave taste, sight, and smell to the feeding animals as tools. He adorned the foods with various decorations, then soothed their flighty breasts, and attracted the indifferent by exciting them.

When the food enters the mouth, the sense of taste immediately sends telegraphs to every part of the body. The sense of smell telephones, giving information about the types of foods.

These senses act according to all the different needs of the different animals receiving food; the necessary preparations are made, or it receives a refusal.

Then they throw it out, and spit it in your face! Since they have been charged with this by wisdom, don't seduce them with pleasure. Don't deceive them by gratifying them.

For then they will forget what true appetite is; false appetite will be born; it will strike your head, bringing illness and disease as penalties.

True pleasure springs from true appetite, true appetite from true need; this pleasure is ample for king and beggar alike.

Moreover, a dinar and a dirhem are equal; the pleasure jumbles them together, soothing the pain.


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29. This piece forms the seed of iktisad Risalesi [The Nineteenth Flash]. Indeed, he expressed in ten lines the ten-page Treatise On Frugality before it came into existence.