the clay of which man is made.
One day the Prophet drank of a stream and found its taste more sweet than rose-water. As he was sitting by the stream, someone came and filled his clay pitcher from it, and the Prophet drank out of that also. To his amazement, he found the water bitter. "O God," he said, "the water of the stream and the water in the pitcher are one; disclose to me the secret of the difference in their taste. Why is the water in the pitcher bitter, and the other sweet as honey?" From the pitcher itself came the answer. "I am old; the clay of which I am made has been worked over and over again into a thousand shapes. But in every shape I am impregnated with the bitter savour of mortality. It exists in me in such a way that the water which I hold cannot be sweet."