dense matter by means of life into a subtle substance; and since it strews the light of life everywhere in great abundance, and gilds most things with the light of consciousness; with such flawless power and faultless wisdom, the All-Wise and All-Powerful One would certainly not neglect the other floods of subtle matter like light and ether, which are close to and fitting for the spirit; He would not leave them without life, without consciousness, inanimate. Indeed, He creates animate and conscious beings in great numbers from light, which is also matter, and even from meanings, air, and even words. Just as He creates numerous different species of animals, so from these torrents of subtle matter He creates numerous different spirit creatures. One kind of them are the angels, others are the varieties of spirit beings and jinn. If you wish to see just how true, self-evident, and rational it is to accept the existence of great numbers of angels and spirit beings, and as the Qur’an shows, just how contrary to truth and wisdom, and what a superstition, aberration, delirium and foolishness it is not to accept them, consider the following comparison.

There were two men, one rustic and uncouth, the other civilized and intelligent, who made friends and went to a splendid city like Istanbul. In a distant corner of that civilized, magnificent city they came across a dirty, wretched little building, a factory. They looked and saw that the strange factory was full of miserable, impoverished men working. All around the building were beings with spirits and animate beings, but their means of livelihood and conditions of life were such that some were herbivorous, they lived only on plants, while others were piscivorous, they ate nothing but fish.

The two men watched the scene. Then they saw in the distance thousands of adorned palaces and lofty castles. Among the palaces were spacious workshops and broad squares. Because of either the distance, or the defectiveness of the men’s eyesight, or because they had hidden themselves, the inhabitants of the palaces were not visible to the two men. Moreover, the wretched conditions in the factory were not to be seen in the palaces. In consequence of this, the uncouth country bumpkin, who had never before seen a city, declared: “Those palaces have no inhabitants, they are empty, there are no beings with spirits in them,” uttering ignorant garbled nonsense. To which the second man replied:

“O you miserable man! This insignificant little building you see here has been filled with beings endowed with spirits, with workers, and there is someone who continually employs and replaces them. Look, there no empty space anywhere around this factory, it has been filled with animate beings and beings with spirits. Do you think it is at all possible that there