The reason that most great men are seen to come from poor...

The reason that most great men are seen to come from poor circumstances is that the poor have to fight against the difference of life and this causes them to strengthen their intelligence. The history of science and civilisation shows that progress in these fields is accompanied by difficulties and hardships. Such discomforts lead us to search for a solution, and then move us to find a more favourable situation.

Therefore, those who are ignorant of the true reason why we experience hardships and discomforts and thereby consider them to be evil they have made a mistake. Every soul has to experience the taste of death. We test you with both hardships and blessings. In the end you will all return to Us. (21:35) People pray as earnestly to gain evil as one should to gain virtue. But people are hasty.

(17:11) You may not like something which, in fact, is for your good and something that you may love, in fact, may be evil. God knows, but you do not know. (2:216) Criteria for Good and Evil The error of the ancient Iranians who considered extremes of heat and cold and poisonous animals to be evil lay in their taking their own physical environment as the criterion of good and bad for all the things of this world.

The fact remains that benefit and harm cannot be the criterion for the good and the evil in things rather, we must see what role everything plays in the total system of creation. This same heat and cold, which, according to their short-sightedness and their erroneous assumptions, are bad, are, on the contrary, in the view of the scholar of natural sciences who looks at the world as a unit really a benefit, and their existence is a necessity for the growth of plants, animals and men.

Those who use their own benefit and disadvantage as the criteria for good and evil in the world can be compared with the ant who might consider that man is of no use to squash ants under his foot. Or that airplanes and cars, having no us for him, were therefore totally useless and harmful. If ants think this about man and his inventions, are they correct? Where does their error come from?

Is it not because they have considered only their own situation and what is connected with themselves as the measure of good and evil? Again, consider those who are new to tropical coasts and think the excessive humidity which causes them to sweat and suffer the resultant discomforts to be only a negative phenomenon preventing people from continuing their normal lives.