In the same work he tells us that one of his besetting...

In the same work he tells us that one of his besetting weaknesses had been the craving for applause, and in his Ihya-ul-ulum ("Revival of the Religious Sciences") he devotes a long chapter to the dangers involved in a love of notoriety and the cure for it. After his conversion he retired into religious. seclusion for eleven years at Damascus (a corner of the mosque there still bears his name--"The Ghazzali Corner") and Jerusalem, where he gave himself up to intense and prolonged meditation.

But he was too noble a character to concentrate himself entirely on his own soul and its eternal prospects. The requests of his children--and other family affairs of which we have no exact information--caused him to return home. Besides this, the continued progress of the Ismailians (connected with the famous Assassins), the spread of irreligious doctrines and the increasing.

religious indifference of the masses not only filled Ghazzali and his Sufi friends with profound grief, but determined them to stem the, evil with the whole force of their philosophy, the ardour of vital conviction, and the authority of noble example. In his autobiography referred to above Ghazzali tells us that, after emerging from a state of Pyrrhonic scepticism, he had finally arrived at the conclusion that the mystics were on the right path and true "Arifin," or Knowers of God.

1 But in saying this he meant those Sufis whose mysticism did not carry them into, extravagant utterances like that of Mansur Hallaj, who was crucified at Bagdad (A.D. 922) for exclaiming "I am the Truth, or God." In his Ihya-ul-ulum Ghazzali says: "The matter went so far that certain persons boasted of a union with the Deity, and chat in His unveiled presence they beheld Him, and enjoyed familiar converse with Him, saying, "Thus it was spoken unto us and thus we speak. " Bayazid Bistami (ob. A.

D. 875) is reported to have exclaimed, "Glory be to me!" This style of discourse exerts a very pernicious influence on the common people. Some husbandmen indeed, letting their farms run to waste, set up similar pretensions for themselves; for human nature is pleased with maxims like these, which permit one to neglect useful labour with the idea of acquiring .spiritual purity through the attainment of certain mysterious degrees and qualities.