[FN#117] Arab. "Taksнm" dividing into parts, analysis.
[FN#118] this is the usual illogical contention of all religions. It is not the question whether an Almighty Being can do a given thing: the question is whether He has or has not done it.
[FN#119] Upon the old simile of the potter I shall have something to say in a coming volume.
[FN#120] A fine specimen of a peculiarity in the undeveloped mind of man, the universal confusion between things objective as a dead body and states of things as death. We begin by giving a name, for facility of intercourse, to phases, phenomena and conditions of matter; and, having created the word we proceed to supply it with a fanciful entity, e.g. "The Mind (a useful term to express the aggregate action of the brain, nervous system etc.) of man is immortal." The next step is personification as Time with his forelock, Death with his skull and Night (the absence of light) with her starry mantle. For poetry this abuse of language is a sine qua non, but it is deadly foe to all true philosophy.
[FN#121] Christians would naturally understand this "One Word" to be the {lуgos} of the Platonists, adopted by St. John (comparatively a late writer) and by the Alexandrian school, Jewish (as Philo Judжus) and Christian. But here the tale-teller alludes to the Divine Word "Kun" (be!) whereby the worlds came into existence.
[FN#122] Arab. "Ya bunayyн" a dim. form lit. "O my little son !" an affectionate address frequent in Russian, whose "little father" (under "Bog") is his Czar.
[FN#123] Thus in two texts. Mr. Payne has, "Verily God the Most High created man after His own image, and likened him to Himself, all of Him truth, without falsehood; then He gave him dominion over himself and ordered him and forbade him, and it was man who transgressed His commandment and erred in his obedience and brought falsehood upon himself of his own will." Here he borrows from the Bresl. Edit. viii. 84 (five first lines). But the doctrine is rather Jewish and Christian than Moslem: Al-Mas'ъdi (ii. 389) introduces a Copt in the presence of Ibn Tutъn saying, "Prince, these people (designing a Jew) pretend that Allah Almighty created Adam (i.e. mankind) after His own image" ('Alб Sъrati-h).
[FN#124] Arab. "Istitб'ah"=ableness e.g. "Al hajj 'inda 'l-Istitб'ah"=Pilgrimage when a man is able thereto (by easy circumstances).
[FN#125] Arab. "Al-Kasab," which phrenologists would translate "acquisitiveness," The author is here attempting to reconcile man's moral responsibility, that is Freewill, with Fate by which all human actions are directed and controlled. I cannot see that he fails to "apprehend the knotty point of doctrine involved"; but I find his inability to make two contraries agree as pronounced as that of all others, Moslems and Christians, that preceded him in the same path.
[FN#126] The order should be, "men, angels and Jinn," for which see vol. i. p. 10. But "angels" here takes precedence because Iblis was one of them.