decry its order out of vicious pleasure. Whereas the beauty of the order, and the perfection and loftiness of the truths of the world each of which in the view of reason and wisdom is a clear miracle of power — have been so embroidered by the hand of wisdom that if they were to be compared with all the past amazing beauty and perfection of all the fanciful and the exaggerators, it would show those wondrous delusions to be utterly commonplace and those divine practices to be utterly beautiful and full of majesty. But familiarity, the sister of compounded ignorance and mother of superficiality, have closed the eyes of those exaggerators. It is to open such eyes that the Wise Book commands that attention be directed to the out- side world and to the self, both of which are familiar. Yes, it i only the stars of the Qur'an that will open eyes. They are stars so bright they both disperse the darkness of ignorance and the dimness of superficiality; and with their perspicuousness, they rend the veils of familiarity and superficiality and rip up the masks of the literalists, and direct them towards the truths of the world and of the self and offer them guidance

Furthermore, what gives rise to the tendency to exaggerate is man's innate propensity to actualise the potential. For one of his predilections is to see and display unusual things that arouse won- der, and to renew and innovate. In consequence, since due to his superficial view man does not appreciate the spiritual sustenance in the dishes of the universe beneath the lid of familiarity, he becomes weary at licking the dish and the lid; and since it produces nothing but dissatisfaction and desire for the extraordinary and appetite for fancies, the desire for the extraordinary gives rise to the tendency to exaggerate, to effect renewal and to give it currency. Then the exaggeration, like a snowball at the top of a mountain, rolling down from the summit of the imagination to the tongue, then rolls along from tongue to tongue, both scatters pieces of its own truth to left and right, and grows like an avalanche as numerous fanciful notions increase its size from every tongue due to the tendency to exaggerate. Then it does not fit in the heart, or in the ear, or even in the imagination. Eventually the eye of truth comes, and divesting it of