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📌Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books The Alchemy of Happiness Editorial Note The object of the Editors of this series is a very definite one. They desire above all things that, in their humble way, these books shall be the ambassadors of good-will and understanding between East and West--the old world of Thought and the new of Action. In this endeavour, and in their own sphere, they are but followers of the highest example in the land.

They are confident that a deeper knowledge of the great ideals and lofty philosophy of Oriental thought may help to a revival of that true spirit of Charity which neither despises nor fears the nations of another creed and colour. Finally, in thanking press and public for the very cordial reception given to the "Wisdom of the East" Series, they wish to, state that no pains have been spared to secure the best specialists for the treatment of the various subjects at hand.

Preface RENAN, whose easy-going mind was the exact antithesis to the intense earnestness of Ghazzali, calls him "the most original mind among Arabian philosophers." Notwithstanding this, his fame as a philosopher has been greatly overshadowed by Avicenna, his predecessor, and Averroes, his successor and opponent. It is a significant fact that the Encyclop?dia Britannica devotes five columns to each of the others and only a column and a half to Ghazzali.

Yet it is doubtful whether it is as a philosopher that be would have wished to be chiefly remembered. Several of his works, it is true, are polemics against the philosophers, especially his Tehafot-al-falasifa, or "Destruction of the philosophers," and, as Solomon Munk says in his Melanges de philosophie Juive et Arabe, Ghazzali dealt "a fatal blow" to Arabian philosophy in the East, from which it never recovered, though it revived for a while in Spain . and culminated in Averroes.

Philosopher and sceptic as he was by nature, Ghazzali's chief work was that of a theologian, moralist, and mystic, though his mysticism was strongly balanced by common sense. He had, as he tells. us in his Confessions, experienced "conversion"; God had arrested him "on the edge of the fire," and thenceforth what Browning says of the French poet, Rene Gentilhomme, was true of him: Human praises scare Rather than soothe ears all a-tingle yet With tones few hear and live, and none forget.

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