“Those who adorn the heavens, which are a particle of time,
Come, and depart again, re-appear on the same stage—
For, in the skirts of heaven and the robe of earth, there is
A creation which is successively born as long as God exists.”
By the prolonged periods of duration ascribed to these celestial personages, they allude to the antiquity of the world, which is so immensely great that it cannot be comprised in numbers. The man of spiritual attributes, Shídosh, the son of Anosh, says: “On the termination of the great cycle, human creatures reappear, and the water enveloping the terrestrial globe becomes of the same radical constitution as the waters on high; again, through the intense heat of the luminary, the water disappears, and twelve suns are formed: from the ascent of vapors and the blending of exhalations, the celestial disks are enveloped, when the tailed comets, which the Persians call ‘minor suns,’ and the Arabs Shamseyat, or ‘smaller solar bodies,’[72] * consume alike the humid and the dry: such is the necessary termination of that cycle: the world and its inhabitants will be created anew.” * Mulla Ismail Suffi, of Isfahan, says:
“The world which is one, the creator, and the creation,
Both these worlds are like the scum of his cup;
This revolution of time resembles a painted lantern,
Which, notwithstanding its motion, remains in the same position.”
The assertion “that only the four classes above enumerated are of human race,” implies that this denomination is attached to the professors of humanity, virtue, and discrimination; superior to which is showing mercy to the animal creation; also the knowledge of one’s self and of the Creator; nay, the person destitute of these characteristics has no share of the nature of man. Thus the sage Ferdusi says: