This notion is productive of great injury...

This notion is productive of great injury, so that the death of one of these foolish babblers would be a, greater benefit to the cause of true religion than the saving alive of ten of them." For himself Ghazzali was a practical mystic. His aim was to make men better by leading them from a merely notional acquiescence in the stereotyped creed of Islam to a real knowledge of God.

The first four chapters of The Alchemy of Happiness are a commentary on the famous verse in the Hadis (traditional sayings of, Muhammad), "He who knows himself knows God. " He is especially scornful of the parrotlike repetition of orthodox phrases. Thus alluding to the almost hourly use by Muhammadans of the phrase, "I take refuge in God" (Naudhibillah!), Ghazzali says, in the Ihya-ul-ulum: "Satan laughs at such pious ejaculations.

Those who utter them are like a man who .should meet a lion in a desert, while there is a fort at no great distance, and, when he sees the evil beast, should stand exclaiming, 'I take refuge in that fortress,' without moving a step towards it. What will such an ejaculation profit him?

In the same way the mere exclamation, 'I take refuge in God,' will not protect thee from the terrors of His judgment unless thou really take refuge in Him." It is related of some unknown Sufi that when, asked for a definition of religious sincerity he drew a red-hot piece of iron out of a blacksmith's forge, and said, "Behold it!" This "red-hot" sincerity is certainly characteristic of Ghazzali, and there is no wonder that he did not admire his contemporary, Omar Khayyam.

The little picture of the lion and the fort in the above passage is a small instance of another conspicuous trait in Ghazzali's mind--his turn for allegory. Emerson says, "Whoever thinks, intently will find an image more or less luminous rise in his mind." In Ghazzali's writings many such images arise, some grotesque and some beautiful. His allegory of the soul as a fortress beleaguered by the "armies of Satan" is a striking anticipation of the Holy War of Bunyan.

The greatest of all the Sufi poets, Jalaluddin Rumi, born a century after Ghazzali's death (A.D. 1207), has paid him the compliment of incorporating several of these allegories which occur in the Ihya into his own Masnavi.