In a manner corresponding to the different worlds and grades of Souls, men themselves differ from one another. The man of sensuous nature must be content with the Koran and Tradition: he should not venture beyond the letter of the Law. The study of duty is his bread of life; philosophy would be a deadly poison to him. He who cannot swim should not venture into the sea.
However there are always people who go into the water for the purpose of learning to swim. They want to elevate [[166]]their faith into knowledge, but in the process they may easily fall into doubt and unbelief. For them, in Gazali’s opinion, a useful remedy may be found in the study of Doctrine and Polemics directed against Philosophy.
Those, however, have reached the highest degree of human perfection, who, without any laborious cogitation, experience in themselves by means of an inward and Divine illumination the truth and the reality of the Spiritual World. Such are the prophets and pious mystics, among whom Gazali himself may be reckoned. They see God in everything,—Him, and Him alone—, and in Nature just as in the life of their own Soul; but they see Him best in the Soul, for although it is not Divine it has at least a likeness to the Divine. How altered now is every outward thing! That which seems to be in existence outside of us, becomes a condition or a property of the Soul, which in the consciousness of its union with God, advances to the highest bliss. All things then become one in Love. The true service of God transcends fear of punishment and hope of reward, attaining to Love of God in the Spirit. The perfect servant of God is raised above endurance and thanksgiving,—which constitute the obligation of the pious wanderer upon the earth, so long as he remains imperfect—, so that even in this world he loves and praises God with joy of heart.
8. From what has been said it follows that there are three stages of Belief or Certainty. First, the belief of the multitude, who believe what some man worthy of belief declares to them, for instance, that So-and-so is in the house; secondly, the knowledge of the learned, gained by deduction: they have heard So-and-so speaking, [[167]]and conclude that he is in the house; but thirdly we have the immediate certainty of the ‘knowing’ ones, for they have entered the house and seen the person with their own eyes.
In contradistinction to the Dialecticians and Philosophers, Gazali everywhere lays stress upon experience. The former, with their Universal Ideas, in the first place fail to do justice to the multiplicity which attaches to this world of sense. The sensible qualities of things,—even the number of the stars for example,—we come to know only through experience, and not from pure Ideas. Much less, however, do such Ideas exhaust the heights and depths of our inner being. That which the friend of God knows intuitively, remains hidden for ever from the discursive intellect of the learned. A very small number attain to this height of knowledge, where they meet with the Apostles of God and Prophets of all times. It is the duty then of the Spirits who stand at a lower level to strive to follow them.
But now how are we to recognize the superior Spirit whom we need as our guide? That is a question, on which every religiously-determined system, which cannot do without human intermediaries, must founder, if considered purely in the light of the understanding. Even Gazali’s answer is indecisive. This much is certain to him, that grounds furnished by the reason alone cannot decide this question. The Prophet and Teacher who has been actually inspired by God is recognized by merging ourselves in his peculiar personality, through the experience of an inward relationship. The truth of Prophecy is authenticated by the moral influence which it exercises upon the Soul. Of the truthfulness of God’s word in the Koran we acquire a [[168]]moral, not a theoretical certainty. The detached miracle is not capable of convincing; but the revelation as a whole, together with the personality of the Prophet, through whom the revelation has been conveyed, produce an irresistible impression upon the kindred soul. Then, wholly carried away by such impression, the soul renounces the world, to walk in the way of God.
9. Gazali is without doubt the most remarkable figure in all Islam. His doctrine is the expression of his own personality. He abandoned the attempt to understand this world. But the religious problem he comprehended much more profoundly than did the philosophers of his time. These were intellectual in their methods, like their Greek predecessors, and consequently regarded the doctrines of Religion as merely the products of the conception or fancy or even caprice of the lawgiver. According to them Religion was either blind obedience, or a kind of knowledge which contained truth of an inferior order.
On the other hand Gazali represents Religion as the experience of his inner Being. It is for him more than Law and more than Doctrine: it is the Soul’s experience.
It is not every one who has this experience of Gazali’s. But even those who cannot follow him in his mystic flight, when he transcends the conditions of any possible experience, will at least be constrained to acknowledge that his aberrations in searching for the highest are not less important for the history of the Human Mind than the apparently surer paths taken by the philosophers of his time, through a land which others had discovered before them. [[169]]