dependent on it; just as co-operation is necessary to lift a large physical stone. But in the second sort, co-operation and combining ideas are essentially without effect. One and a thousand are equal. Just like jumping over a chasm or passing through a narrow defile; the whole and a part are the same. Co-operation is profitless.

According to this analogy, some of the sciences (fünun) are in need of co-operation, like when lifting a large boulder. These are mostly the physical sciences (ulûm-u mâddiye). The other sort resemble the second example; they are perfected instantaneously, or so it seems. They are mostly sciences dealing with ethics or metaphysics (mâneviyat) or theology. The accumulation of ideas does not alter, perfect, or augment them, but it does clarify, disclose, and strengthen their methods of proof.

It should also be noted that if a person becomes deeply involved in something, it usually makes him slow in other things. It is because of this that the person who becomes absorbed in materiality grows ignorant of spiritual and non-material matters and his knowledge is superficial. Hence, just as the pronouncement concerning moral and spiritual matters of someone proficient in material ones will not be authoritative, so most of the things he says about them will not be worth listening to. For sure, if, drawing an analogy between medicine and engineering, an invalid were to consult an engineer instead of the doctor and take the medicine he prescribed, it would mean inviting his relatives to his wake and asking for a report ordering his transfer to the hospital of the graveyard. Similarly, to consult the ideas of the materialists concerning spiritual matters, which are sheer truths and totally abstract, is quite simply to announce the arrest of the heart, a subtle dominical faculty, and the death of the mind, a luminous substance. Yes, the minds of those who seek everything in materiality see no further than their eyes, and the eyes cannot see spiritual matters.