They may remain unknown or unappreciated by others, but they are none the less riches to him who possesses them.
It was during this same tenth century in which Alfarabi lived, that there existed at Baghdad a Society composed of Mohammedans, Jews, Christians, and Atheists, for the purpose of Philosophical discussions and scientific investigation; and it was doubtless under this influence that Alfarabi was educated and enabled to cope with the philosophers of the world. Here in Arabia was the highest culture known at the time, in Medicine and all the Arts and Sciences, while the Ecclesiastics were inaugurating the dark ages elsewhere, to eventually spread over the whole of Europe.
Here and there have always appeared individuals superior to their age and time; men who dug to the foundations of knowledge, built character, accumulated resources, and left their impress upon all subsequent time.
Nor has this accumulation of real knowledge been derived from books and schools, though these resources have not been neglected.
Real culture of the Individual has always consisted in the realization of the latent powers of man, in bringing these to light, in learning by experience how to use them. Hence arise self-knowledge, self-control, and a higher evolution.
It is not a mere technical, intellectual acquirement, the ability to define principles and formulate propositions. It rather consists in testing them out in actual experience; first by self-analysis to become familiar with the real self, its capacities and powers, its motives and aims in life; and having grasped and adjusted all these, then to start consciously, deliberately, determinedly, and intelligently, on “the road to the South,” on the upward climb toward the Light.
“Possessions,” with the great majority of individuals, mean something outward, in space and time; what we have, and, for the time hold, rather than what we are. The average idea of enjoyment is something altogether superficial and transient. It is found, or supposed to be found, in variety of sensations, emotions and feelings; in ringing the changes on these, till vitality fails, disillusion or satiety supervenes, and old age or death closes the play. Often the appetite remains, when vitality fails, and Faust rejuvenated, would run the same gauntlet again. The pity of it is that thousands of these victims of either satiety or Tantalus seem never to dream that there are other values, or anything else, or better, in life.
And yet there is not one of these faculties, capacities and powers that is useless, or, in itself, evil or degrading. They are, one and all, resources of the Individual Intelligence; tools for the day’s work; materials for the building of the Temple; whereas, they most frequently are made the motive and the aim of life. They are means to a higher end, and not the end itself.
Without the latent passions, emotions, and feelings, man would be a mere mechanism. If all were mind, or mere intellect, there could be neither the creation nor the appreciation of beauty. Every work of art would be soulless; music might amuse the intellect by intricate chords and variations, like a colorless kaleidoscope, but it could never touch the heart nor elevate the soul.
Music and art, in the highest sense, through consonant vibrations in us, open the doors and windows of the soul, put us in touch and tune with the Infinite, and then, the real harmony begins. We live for the time in another world and return with a sigh and recover the bated breath, as though we had seen a vision beyond words. Music is an agent, a talisman, a means to an end. It strikes in us chords that lie at the foundation, the combinations that unlock the doors, and the “Imprisoned Splendor” wings in and out like the doves of Hesperides.