But this same connection...

But this same connection, on the other hand, directs the other side of the problem, that of extreme entity, by changing the "rela tive" to "absolute", a problem which faces man continuously. For man weaves his loyalty to a case so that such loyalty provides him with the ability to move and continue marching.

But such loyalty freezes gradually and gets stripped off its relative circumstances within which he was accurate, and the human mind will derive out of it an "absolute" without an end, without a limit to responding to its demands. In religious terminology, such an "absolute" eventually changes to a god worship- ped instead of a need that requires fulfillment.

When the "relative" changes to an "absolute," to a "god" of this sort, it becomes a factor in encircling man's movement, freezing its capa- cities to develop and create, paralysing man from performing his naturally open role in the march: Associate not with Allah any other god, lest you sit despised, neglected. (Qur'an, 17:22) This is a true fact applicable to all "gods" mankind made along history, albeit if they were made during the idolatory stage of worship or its succeeding stage.

From the stage of tribe to that of science, we find a series of gods which deterred mankind who worshipped them, treat- ing them as an "absolute," from making any accurate progress . . . Indeed, from the tribe to which man sub- mitted his alliance, considering it as an actual need dictated by his particular living circum- stances, he went to the extreme, changing it to an "absolute," without being able to see any- thing except through them. Hence, they became an obstacle in his way to progress.

To science, to which modern man deserv- edly granted alliance, for it paved for him the way to control nature . . ., but he sometimes exaggerated such an alliance, turning it to an absolute alliance, trespassing his limits while being infatuated by it. Thus, man derived out of science, with which he was infatuated, an "absolute" to worship, offering it the rites of obeisance and loyalty, refusing for its own sake all ideals and facts which can never be measured by metres or seen by microscopes.

Accordingly, every limited and relative thing, if man wove out of it, at a certain stage, an absolute to which he thus relates himself, becomes at a stage of intellectual maturity a shackle on the mind that made it, because of its being limited and relative! Hence, man's march has to have an Abso- lute . . . !!!