[179] According to the Occidental fabulists (see Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, canto XXXIV), the moon holds, in a strait valley between two mountains, all that mortals lose here below: fame, tears and sighs of lovers, lost time, futile designs, vain desires, ancient crowns, all instruments of deceit, treaties, and conspiracies, works of false coiners and knaves, the good sense of every body, is there bottled; all is there except folly, which remains below, and never quits the earth:
Sol la Pazzia non v’è poca, nè assai,
Chè stà quaggiù, nè se ne parte mai.
§ XIV.—The Religion of the Sufis.
We arrive at the last chapter, “Upon the Sufis;” the most abstruse of the twelve, but to which we are well enough prepared by the contents of the former.
Súfism, according to the Dabistán, belongs to all religions; its adherents are known, under different names among the Hindus, Persians, and Arabians; it appears to be nothing else but the rationalism of any sort of doctrine. It could never be the religion of a whole nation; it remained confined to the precincts of schools and societies.
In the work before us we find it stated, that the belief of the pure Súfis was the same as that of the Ashrakians (Platonists): we know what the Muhammedans have made of it. According to the Imám Koshairi, quoted by Jâmi,[180] the Muselmans, after Muhammed’s death, distinguished the eminent men among them by no other title but that of “the companions of God’s apostle.” These were, in the second generation, called Tábáyún, “followers.” Afterwards the Islamites were divided into divers classes; those among them who particularly devoted themselves to the practice of religion, were named “servants of God,” which name was, after the rise of numerous sects, claimed by some from among all the different sectaries. It was then that the followers of the orthodox doctrine, in order to preserve the purity of their faith and the strength of their piety, assumed the name of Súfis, which name became celebrated before the end of the second century of the Hejira, that is, before the year 815 of our era. We may believe one of the greatest scholars of Muhammedism, Ghazáli, who ranged himself among the Súfis of his time towards the end of our eleventh century, when he declares that in their society he found rest in believing one God, the prophet, and the last judgment: this is the faith of the orthodox Súfis.
The assumption of any particular name carries men, who so distinguish and separate themselves from their fellows, much further than they themselves at first intended, particularly when the distinction and separation are founded upon vague and indeterminate notions of metaphysics. Under the impression, that there are secrets upon which their salvation depends, they will stretch reason and imagination to penetrate them. The Súfis are divided, according to their own phraseology,[181] into three classes: “the attracted, the travellers,” and “the attracted travellers;” the last of whom combine the qualities of the two former. I will class them here, with respect to their doctrine and manners, into five orders.
1. The religious Súfis, in general, are occupied with something beyond the limits of our natural consciousness; they exercise to the utmost their inward organ or inner sense, and acquire a philosophic imagination—