The Book of Happiness

In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.

The Book of Happiness (Kitāb al-saʻādah)

Praise be to God, who has extended His favours over all creation and singled out His friends with the special portions of His allotment. I praise Him for the wisdom He has poured forth, and I ask of Him the drawing forth of thanks for His benefactions; and blessing upon His prophet and his kin. Now then: it is established as binding upon the man whom God has singled out with high aspiration, whose portion of soundness of judgement He has made ample, who has set for himself in every virtue (faḍīlah) a footing of truth and has cast his lot for his opinion in every truth, that he should aspire to what the Master has aspired to — may God help him to attain the truth and make smooth for him the road of his aims — so that we may climb from the steps of wisdom to its highest summit and win its sweetest fruit. Ever since I saw his longing for the true sciences and his being stamped with the stamp of wisdom, I have kept furnishing him, one thing after another, with what he sought of them, as time allowed and as the occasion required, until he came to me with the very purpose of the sage which he supports by his striving and the goal of the philosopher which he seeks by his exertion: he asked me about the kinds of human happiness according to men's ranks, what they are and how great the disparity between them, so that his resolve might be directed to the highest of them and his striving confined to the furthest of them. So I promised to set that down in a memorandum that would stand before his eyes and lie within reach of his hand, so that he might observe in it the greatness of what men have aimed at with their aspirations and what they have raised their souls towards; and I begin this with God's help. I shall speak, then, of the happiness laid down for man, what it is and how it is; and what the happiness is that men share in as men of their kind; and what those among them who exert themselves attain of it by the various kinds of exertion; and whether these are different or in agreement; and whether some of them fall under others so as to rise to one which is the loftiest of them in rank; and, if they do rise to one, what that one is; and whether beyond them there is another happiness that is not to be looked for by man nor coveted by him, or whether all the happinesses terminate in it and come to a stand there with the standing of what is terminated, beyond which there is no further end; and whether this great thing for which man is a candidate, with his nobility and the loftiness of his worth, is to be had without striving and exertion, or without an art and habituation, and by some road other than the one the sages laid out and trod and urged the sons of wisdom towards; and whether what they made long, multiplying the number of books upon it, admits of abridgement; and, if that is not possible, whether the span of a man's life suffices for acquiring it by art; and whether men differ in the acquisition of what they acquire of it, and whether it comes near for some of them and remains far for others; and if they do differ in it, what measure of time is to be assigned to the keenest of them in soul when some occupation has overcome him and turned his concern towards itself; and what the description of this keen man is within the assigned span; and what the number of the books is that cannot be dispensed with, and the art he cannot do without; and which is the shortest of the roads to his goal, the goal he reaches by the utmost of his speculation. And before we embark upon discourse about this great happiness, let us lay down for it a discourse by way of a preface. These two are likenesses of nature; and this is a sound opinion by analogy, and it survives scrutiny, and it is evident to whoever reflects upon all the instruments of art, for each one of them is taken from a natural counterpart of itself. Nor is it admissible that there should exist an instrument of art having no purpose and no fruit; and, along with that, it is not admissible that one instrument should stand in the place of another so as to discharge its purpose and its perfection (kamāl) fully and in truth. For the saw, though it be used for some of what is done with the adze, cannot discharge all the acts of the adze fully. And so with all instruments: each one of them has a perfection proper to it and a purpose that is accomplished by it, and it is described as good and praised in truth only when it is found at its perfection and when there issues from it that purpose for which it exists and for the sake of which it was made. And if art, which nature precedes, is of this description, then it is fitting that nature, which is the ruling one and the more powerful, should be of this description too; and it is necessary that nothing be done in vain, and that there be no instrument of hers without a purpose and without a perfection proper to it, nor anything among them standing in the place of another and discharging its act fully, for in that case the first would become idle and pointless. Something of this wisdom of nature may be taken as a plain demonstration by whoever reflects upon the members of the body. For all the parts of the body are her natural instruments, and by each one of them she performs a proper act which is not accomplished by another and is not committed to any other — as with the heart, which is the principle of motion, by which she produces the heat that is the cause of life; then from it arise the pulsating vessels in which the power of the heart runs to the rest of the members, so that by them the life of the whole body is accomplished. So too the brain: the nerves arising from it run the course that the arteries run from the heart, in that they are fixed in the brain and reach to the end of the body, and by them sensation and voluntary motion are accomplished. And so with all the parts of the body and the remaining members, such as the stomach, the spleen, the gall bladder and the intestines, and likewise all the outward instruments, many as they are: there is nothing among them that can be thought superfluous, or whose existence is for anything but a completion proper to it. Whoever looks into the book On the Uses of the Parts will come upon a great wisdom and will see clearly much of what I have merely gestured at in this place. And if nature is in this condition, and she is prior, then the soul (nafs) is a likeness of her, so judgement dictates that the soul is fitter for this station and more deserving of this wisdom. For the animals of the differing species are used by the soul in the manner of instruments, and she appoints each one of them to something proper to it, from which there issues an act that does not issue from another, just as the act of the saw does not issue from the adze, on the example we set out above. And now that we have put first what we wished to put first by way of preface, let us return and say:

Since it has been shown that every existent has a perfection proper to it and an end for which and for the sake of which it exists, it follows necessarily that man, who is the noblest of the existents in this world of generation, is the fitter for this making, and that he has a perfection and a completion and a purpose for which and for the sake of which he exists. When the sages looked into the end of man and the perfection for the sake of which he exists, they found that he has two perfections, one of them near and the other remote. An example of this among the instruments of art is the hammer: its near perfection is that it should beat out hard bodies, and its remote perfection is that the signet ring should be completed by it. So too an example among the natural instruments is the stomach: its near perfection is that it should hold food and cook it and prepare it for nourishment, and its remote perfection is that it should render back to the body the replacement of what has been dissolved from it, so that its subsistence may be complete. And so with man. As for his near perfection, it is the issuing of acts from him out of deliberation and discrimination, and that he should order them according to what the intellect (ʻaql) requires; and as for his remote perfection, it will appear in the course of what we are about to expound. Except that, when the sages looked into deliberation and discrimination, they found the two of them issuing from a faculty (quwwah) higher than themselves, and they went on tracing one thing after another until they arrived at an end beyond which there is no end. And it is known that if every end had an end, that would go on without limit, and what has no limit cannot exist. So when they arrived at the end of ends and were certain that there is no way beyond it, they halted there and refrained from further inquiry, and they knew that the ends below it are ranked beneath it as steps and stairways. And when they looked into the end of man and his nearer perfection, they found men differing, and they saw that, for all their difference, they do not doubt that they have an end, and that their difference is only over which of the ends it is. Each one of them has set up an end for himself which he aims at by his striving and calls his happiness — but one strives for delight (ladhdhah), another for wealth, another for health, another for mastery, another for knowledge. They fell into this difference only because they did not attend to the remote perfection, I mean the utmost happiness; and had they known it and set it up as their purpose, they would have striven towards it by way of the remaining things, as the craftsman does: for when he knows the furthest perfection of the hammer, I mean the making of a crown or a signet ring or a bracelet, he directs the road and the beating out of the hard body towards that. Among these things we have enumerated there is what may be called happiness metaphorically, and the like of it what is happiness in truth, and among them what is supposed to be happiness and is not happiness at all. For whatever among them is common to man and the beasts is not happiness for us, because it is not our end and our perfection insofar as we are men; whereas what among them is proper to man insofar as he is man may be called happiness — except that this sense is common to all men. And among these happinesses that are proper to man there is what is common to men, as we said, in which they share; and among them what is proper to this or that individual man; and among them what is the most special of all, which is that to which the happinesses ascend and at which all of them come to a stand, for all the happinesses exist for its sake and by reason of it, and it is the last purpose and the furthest perfection. I shall set out these divisions, God willing and with His help. As for the matter common to all men and to all animals, it is food and drink and the various kinds of relief, I mean the body's voiding of its superfluities and what resembles that; and this is what people call the pleasant, and most of them call the like of this their end. Pending a complete demonstration that this is not happiness, nor man's perfection and end for which and for the sake of which he was created, I shall say about it something convincing and plain, namely that the beasts obtain of these things the like of what man obtains — indeed their appetites in foods and drinks and mating are greater and more lasting than man's appetites in them, and they are stronger for them; and further, the ignorant among men, who are the more bestial, are stronger in these matters than the excellent among them. So it is plain that these are not man's furthest end nor his perfection insofar as he is man. As for the happiness common to men insofar as they are men, it is what we mentioned before: the issuing of acts according to deliberation and discrimination and as the intellect apportions. This sense is a happiness that exists for every man, and everyone can obtain some of it and enjoy it to the measure of his rank in humanity, and the measure of his awareness of the fine and the foul, and his acquisition of the stations of the virtues and the vices, and the ranks of praise and blame. It is what is meant when it is said that so-and-so is “more human than” so-and-so. Every nation and generation has a portion of it in which they hold in common, even if they surpass one another in what they make of it. Whoever falls from this rank all at once, so that he has no share of it, ought not to be called a man, save as a painter's figure is called a man by way of likeness, on account of the outlines alone. This sense is bestowed upon men generally by the innate disposition (fiṭrah) and the first natural constitution, and they surpass one another according to their use of it. As for the happiness that is proper according to this or that individual man, it is that which belongs particularly to the possessor of some science or excellent art; and they differ in it according to their ranks in the sciences and the arts, and according to the conditions in which they let their acts issue as opinion and discrimination require. For the happiness of the well-to-do man and the happiness of the poor man, though they differ according to conditions, agree in the ordering of acts: the happiness of the well-to-do appears in expenditure and in distributing wealth in its proper direction, I mean that he should use it where he ought and as he ought and with whom he ought, and the happiness of the poor appears in patience and in bearing up as he ought and in the condition in which he ought and with whom he ought. So too the happinesses of the men of the sciences and the arts: the happiness of the skilled physician is not like the happiness of the deft secretary, and the happiness of one learned in many branches is not like the happiness of one learned in a single branch — I mean that, though they all order their acts, these differ according to the subject matters they investigate. Then each one of these has acts proper to him insofar as he is the possessor of some science or some art, and acts proper to him insofar as he is a man; and the happiness proper to him is not obtained by him until the happiness common to him and to others has been obtained. An example of that: if the physician performs a fine act insofar as he is a physician and yet does otherwise insofar as he is a man, then the recompense he had gained by his art is annulled by what he has committed on the side of his humanity; and if it is not annulled altogether, nothing of it remains but a small part, as measured by the comparison, that is, that his humanity be measured against his medicine, so that his happiness is as much as this naming seeks for him. And on this the rest of the happinesses are to be reckoned, according to each science and each art.

As for the kinds of wretchedness that stand opposite these happinesses, we have left off mentioning them, because they are known from their opposites, as is shown in logic, that the knowledge of opposites comes together in a single state. Every man, then, should be led according to his class and his rank towards the happiness proper to him, in the loftiest way it may be and the best that is possible and that capacity reaches. This is a topic proper to the masters of the divine governances and to those who act in their stead, and it is to be found in the revealed laws; and the sages too have written many books upon it, so let it be taken from there, for what we have gestured at in this place is sufficient. Were the happinesses not many and of various kinds, the happy man in truth would be one man among men, namely the one who had acquired all the parts of philosophy and understood all the arts and whose portion of the whole of wisdom was ample. And were that so, the existence of the rest of men would be pointless, with no end and no perfection for them, and they would turn out wretched; and then praise and blame would fall away, invocation and rebuke would be void, and discipline and governance would be a foul thing. This is contrary to what the learned have mentioned and established and what the intellects have borne witness to and confirmed. So it has been shown that men's happinesses are many, differing in existence by reason of the many subject matters they have. As for the utmost happiness, we shall speak of it after we have shown that none of these happinesses is the perfection or the end. For they are of two kinds: one kind of them is laid out in breadth and one kind of them is laid out in depth; and let us set an example of that among the arts, for there it is plainer and more agreeable. As for what is laid out in breadth, it is that which is supposed not to be ranked one beneath another, such as trade and carpentry and dyeing and weaving and the like of these; for these are as though laid out upon a plane, and they are entered upon from differing starting points and terminate in disparate ends. As for what is laid out in depth, it is what is ranked one beneath another, as the art of saddlery is ranked beneath the art of horsemanship, and the art of horsemanship is ranked beneath the art of war, and the art of war is ranked beneath the art of kingship, and the art of kingship is ranked beneath the art of the law — I mean that it preserves for men the customs by which their affair is set in good order and leads them towards their happiness, as we said above. So some of these are ruling and some of them are ruled by others. And let us return to the place we parted from and say: when the sages saw the difference of men as to their ends — one of them holding that his end is delight, so that he strives towards it with all his acts, and another holding that his end is affluence and wealth, and others holding it to be health and soundness, and others holding it to be other things resembling these — they looked into them. And behold, as for those of them laid out in breadth, their possessors differ among themselves concerning them. For whoever among them holds for delight or for wealth or for honour, once he has had enough and has come to the end of that end of his, shifts from his opinion. For when the man of delight has had his fill of his delight and is then required to increase what he had supposed to be happiness, that becomes a great wretchedness and a heavy affliction to him, and he too calls happiness wretchedness. For the man of luxury, when he falls ill, holds that happiness is health; and the man of health, when abasement befalls him, holds that happiness is honour. And it is known that honour is a thing that stands fast and does not turn and does not shift, so that its possessor becomes wretched by the very thing through which he became happy. These matters, moreover, may become the cause of their possessors' ruin, sooner or later, as one is ruined by the abundance of his wealth, or in the pursuit of honour and dominion, or in reckless devotion to delight. As for those laid out in depth, it is known that the higher of them is more excellent than the lower, and the lower is a servant to what is higher, since it is wanted only for its sake and by reason of it — like wealth, which is an instrument for attaining needs and is wanted only for the health of the body, and the health of the body is wanted only so that by it the last happiness may be reached, or the happinesses below it; and health for its own sake has been annulled. Now Arisṭū ranked the genera of the happinesses: a happiness in the soul, a happiness in the body, and a happiness outside the body and in what surrounds the body. As for those that are in the soul, they are the sciences and the branches of knowledge and wisdom, and these are the most excellent of them, because they are wanted for their own sake and not for anything else. As for those that are in the body, they are such as beauty and an even balance of health and soundness of temperament; and these are wanted for themselves, and may also be wanted for something else, I mean so that by them the acts of the souls and their virtues may be completed. As for those that are from outside the body, they are such as noble children and friends and affluence and nobility of soul and honours; and it has been shown in the Book of Ethics that those that are outside the body are deficient, whereas those that are in the soul are complete and whole.

It may happen for a man that the happinesses which are from outside the body and those in the body fall to him through inquiry; but it is not admissible that the other, complete happiness should fall to him save through striving and exertion. For the ordering of these happinesses and their articulation as they ought to be, and their acquisition thereafter, is not possible save after long speculation and much discrimination and constant habituation. As for the utmost happiness, not everyone attains it, and not everyone who seeks it wins it; for the use of these happinesses, and looking into which of them is subservient so that by it one may reach what rules over it, and the ascent in them degree by degree until one reaches the highest of them, is obtained only for individuals, the fewest of men in number. And when it happens for one man after another, along with his eagerness and his exertion and the soundness of his discrimination and his keenness, that he is also in sufficiency of livelihood and has leisure — these are many causes that scarcely come together save rarely. Whoever among those who came before reached this station pointed the way to it and guided the sons of wisdom and its seekers towards it; and whoever won of it something beyond what his predecessor had mentioned went on to point out, too, the measure of the increase he had found, until there was gathered from it something great, of high moment. And Arisṭū is the first who set up the last end as the furthest purpose, and laid out towards it a clear road, and made the arrival at it an art that is taught and acquired step by step.

We shall speak of this art and how one cultivates it, and of the fact that there is no way to acquire the utmost happiness by a shorter route, once we have completed this section, if God wills. And since the human happinesses are perfected according to discrimination, and the things that are discriminated by the mind are various, as we showed above, it follows necessarily that the happiest of men is the one who reaches the highest of them, or who attends to the end of them beyond which there is no end, aiming at it from every side. And it is not possible to reach the end of ends before passing through the ranks below it, as we set out in the example above. Hence the most excellent deliberation is that which leads to the most excellent object of deliberation, and the most excellent object of deliberation is that which stands in no further need of another deliberation about another object, and which is at no time made a road to something else, but is wanted for its own sake and never for another's. And with the termination of deliberation and the coming to rest of discrimination the utmost happiness is obtained. It is a mark of one who has reached this station that he is found always vigorous, ample in expectation, strong in hope, steady in courage, neither agitated nor concerned with the affairs of this world save in a very small measure, if you set it beside the states of the rest of men; and he consorts with them and is at odds with them outwardly, while inwardly he is apart from them; and then he is glad and rejoicing in himself, not in anything else. This state cleaves to him and does not change; for the joy that men have is for the most part accidental and from without, and whenever the thing rejoiced in passes away or alters, that becomes gloom and grief — as with one who rejoices in wealth, or in a beloved, or in attaining some delight among the delights of living, or one made glad by a child or by dominion and the like of that. All these are from outside the body, exposed to calamities, shifting with the shifting of conditions, which are of necessity changeable, since they belong to the world of generation and corruption, and the rulings of that world, with their transmutation, run upon them. But the happy man we have described and whose state we have recounted is made glad by his own essence, because he beholds matters that never change and are never transmuted, nor is that admissible of them; and he sees all that he sees with an eye that neither errs nor goes astray nor admits corruption; and he is certain that he is passing from the one existence of his to the other, more perfect entrance. So he is like one who travels a road to a homeland he knows and is at home in with his spirit: with every stage he covers towards it, or every degree he enters that brings him near to it, he increases in vigour and tranquillity and gladness. And this state of confidence and certainty is not obtained by report without direct sight, and is not completed by narration without beholding, and the soul does not come to rest in it save after speculation upon the truth. Those who reach it are of several classes, on the likeness of one who looks with the eye of the head; for men differ in seeing with this eye: among them is he who sees distant things with a clear seeing, and among them is he who does not see them even from near except as a thing is seen from behind a veil. Except that the difference between that state and this state is that the sensible eye, the more it presses on in looking and prolongs its gaze at its sensibles, grows weary and weak, whereas that other eye is the contrary, because it grows strong by pressing on in looking, and increases in clarity and in speed of apprehension by persistence, and goes on increasing in insight and penetration until it apprehends what it had supposed to be unapprehended and unintelligible. And let us return to the course of the first discourse and say that the common human happinesses that we mentioned above are bestowed upon us, and we are constituted for them by nature; and it is the faculty by which we discriminate fine acts from foul, and by which each one is able to acquire for himself a fine character if it is not already there for him; so that if he is of a foul character it is possible for him by it to pass over from it, by his will, to its contrary; then habituation binds him, and the repetition of the acts suited to him, until that becomes a settled disposition. This is the first degree, which ought to be attended to and striven for and exerted after in its acquisition, as we showed above, that by this a man becomes more human. And if we survey most men, we find them of two sorts: a sort whom no praise and no blame attaches to on this account, and a sort whom blame and praise do attach to. Now we do not strive for what neither praise nor blame attaches to, nor do we call it happiness, so let us pass over this sort; but as for what praise and blame attach to, we exert ourselves in acquiring what is praiseworthy of it, and we call it happiness. And these states divide into three divisions, which are acts, affections, and discrimination by the mind. By the affections I mean the affections of the soul, such as appetite and anger and delight and joy and pity and the like of these. As for the acts, a man is praised for them when they are fine and blamed for them when they are foul. As for the affections, they are praised when they occur as they ought and blamed when they occur as they ought not. As for discrimination by the mind, it is praised whenever it is good and blamed whenever it is bad; and badness of discrimination comes about by one of two things: either that it is too weak to discriminate what comes before it, or that it holds concerning things a false belief. And goodness of discrimination, too, comes about by one of two things: either that it is strong enough to discriminate what comes before it, and acquires the realities of matters, and holds concerning them a sound belief. So it follows, according to this foul one, that if we are eager for happiness and for ascending in it to its end, we should manage this first degree, and that our acts be fine and our affections as they ought to be and our discrimination good and sound.

And we have learned that these three states may fall to a man through inquiry, without striving and exertion, and that he may come to possess them without any choice on his part; but we do not call that a complete happiness, and happiness is not obtained save by a man's choosing it and acquiring it by his own striving. And again, he may choose them, but in some things and in some of the time; and this too is not called happiness, and happiness is not obtained save by his choosing it for its own sake and not for anything else. By that I mean that he should prefer fine acts because they are fine, not so as to be remembered for them, nor to profit, nor for anything other than that; and likewise that he should prefer, in the affections, that they befall him as they ought, and, in discrimination, that it be good throughout the length of his life. And a man is capable of these states under these conditions only if he is in a fixed condition, one that either cannot pass away or passes away only with great difficulty. And this condition, in the case of discrimination, is called strength of mind, and in the case of the affections it is called character; and as for the acts, their issuing is from these two. Arisṭū has shown that and laid out the road to it. As for goodness of mind and strength of discrimination, one acquires it in logic, which is an art such that, when a man is measured by it, he knows the ranks of the persuasions and the rectification of opinions concerning every existent as it ought to be and cannot be otherwise; and we shall describe it hereafter. As for the affections of the soul, one acquires it in ethics, in which we show how a man acquires fine character in everything that befalls him, until nothing befalls him but the comely, the fine and the praiseworthy, and that becomes his form and settled disposition in all matters; and it is shown there that this is a possible thing and is not impossible, as some people have supposed; for were it not possible we would not discipline children and youths. And the acquisition of these two, I mean strength of mind by which discrimination is rectified, and the excellent form, I mean the disposition from which acts issue as they ought, are the two parts of wisdom; and it is on that account that the sage divided philosophy into two divisions, theoretical and practical, and neither of them dispenses with the other in the acquisition of happiness. So whoever is strong in both of them together is the perfect happy man and the excellent sage; and whoever is strong in one of them and weak in the other, that is either by his part of theory being strong and his practice weak, or by his part of practice being strong and his part of theory weak. And the cause of the weakness of his practice, for all the strength of his theory, is weakness of resolve: I mean that, though he has it by the innate disposition and by discrimination of the mind, in establishing that some delight is followed by harm from illness, or blame from men, or an evil outcome, he is not deterred from it. And the cause of weakness of resolve is scantness of training in the ethics of which we said that the books composed upon them furnish a man with a settled possession and an excellent form, through the repetition of praiseworthy acts and habituation to them until they become a settled disposition. As for the other case, in which the part of practice is strong and the part of theory weak, it occurs only to one who lends an ear to the sages and gives credence to their sayings and takes their fine acts as his model, thinking well of them, even if soundness in that is not made easy for him by theory; and then he strives, and he has the rank of the believing ṣiddīq. A man of this sort is happier than the first, and his likeness is that of one who accepts from the physician what he commands him and forbids him, so that he is cured of the illness and his body becomes sound; whereas the likeness of the first is that of the learned physician who does not apply what he knows, so that illness befalls him and knowledge does not profit him. And whoever is of this station is called a slave by nature; for whoever has not the power to curb his appetites in accordance with what discrimination requires is a slave by nature, even if he be free by the law; and whoever is strong enough to curb them is free by nature, even if he be a slave by the law. But as for one who follows his delight and does not know the harm that follows upon it, no fine act is to be expected of him, nor does the leaving of a foul one come easily to him, and penalties must certainly be laid down for him, as is found in the revealed laws. And whoever is weak in both these cases together is the bestial man, whose share of humanity is according to his rank in weakness in the two. So it has been shown that the sage who is happy and perfect in happiness is he whose mind is strong and whose discrimination is sound, so that the realities of things in all the existents have been obtained by him, and whose resolve is strong in carrying out what he knows into practice, and who then persists in his way in these two, I mean knowledge and practice. And it has also been shown from what precedes that the part of theory is prior to the part of practice, since it is by goodness of discrimination and strength of discrimination that the right is apprehended in everything one aims to know. And since the branches of knowledge are of two sorts, one of them known and not acted upon and the other known and then acted upon, the arts too became two sorts corresponding to them. By what is known and not acted upon I mean, for example, the knowledge that God, Mighty and Exalted, is one and that He is eternal, the Originator of the world; and as for what is known and not acted upon, it is, for example, fine conduct in dealings and excellence in the arts, and in sum the acts that come about by deliberation and habituation. And for each one of the two arts books have been composed that fix it and make its acquisition easy. And since among these two parts there is what is aimed at for its own sake and sought for itself, and among them what is useful in what is sought for its own sake, art too was divided into two further divisions. As for the art whose end is knowledge alone, its aim is the apprehension of the truth and true belief and certainty without fail, and this is preferred for its own sake and not for another's; and likewise the art whose end is fine practice and excellent character. And both of them, as we said, are a part of wisdom, and each one of them is called wisdom rightly and in truth. But as for the other arts that are useful in these two, they may be called wisdom, and that metaphorically and not in truth; and these are those in which deliberation and habituation are needed for excellence to appear in them. The sages call this shrewdness (kays) and do not apply to it the name of wisdom; and such are the arts that lead to affluence or delight or leadership. So whoever wishes his humanity to be perfected, and to attain that matter for which the creation of man was intended, so as to complete his essence and to share with the sages in what they preferred and aimed at, let him acquire these two arts, I mean the two parts of wisdom, the theoretical and the practical, so that the realities of things may be obtained for him by the theoretical part and the excellences of acts by the practical part. And as for the ordering of these two arts and how one proceeds by them to the two ends mentioned, that is as the sage Arisṭū did it; for he is the one who ordered wisdom and classified it and gave it a road that is travelled from a beginning to an end, as Būlus mentioned in what he wrote to Anūshirwān, where he said:

Before this sage, wisdom was scattered, as the rest of the benefits that God, Exalted, brought forth are scattered, the profiting by them being left to the natural constitution of men and to the power He gave them for that — like the medicines that are found scattered in the lands and the mountains: when they are gathered and compounded, a beneficial drug results from them. In just this way Arisṭū gathered what was scattered of wisdom and joined each thing to its like and put it in its place, until he drew out from it a complete cure that heals souls of the sicknesses of ignorance. And part of that ordering of his was that he looked into the two parts of wisdom, I mean the theoretical and the practical, and found that the theoretical among them is either about the things that are in matter or about the things that are not in matter; and each one of these two divisions divides again into two. For of the things that are in matter, some are under generation and corruption and some are not under generation and corruption; and of the things that are not in matter, some are abstracted in matter, their existence being in the imagination (wahm) with no existence for them from outside, and some are not abstracted from matter but have an existence in their own essence, outside the imagination. These four, then, are the first divisions into which the theoretical part divides. Then, of the matters that are in matter, some are common to them all and some are proper to some of them; among them what is proper to the everlasting things and among them what is proper to the generated things; and of what is proper to the generated, some is common to them all and some is proper to some of them; and of what is proper to some of them, some is proper to the things that are above the earth and some is proper to the things that are in the earth; and of what is proper to those that are in the earth, some is proper to the things that have no souls and some is proper to the things that have souls; and of what is proper to the things that have souls, some is proper to those possessing sensation and some to what has no sensation. So Arisṭū composed on each division among these divisions of these things a book, and his books comprehended all that has been set down in it, of sense and of intellect, and nothing escaped him. And since his concern was turned towards the rectification of the will in all these matters, and towards giving certainty and sufficient persuasions in them, and towards being safe from error and mistake in the intelligibles, he was compelled to inquire into the ranks of the persuasions, and to look into the things in which one cannot err and is not secure against falling into what is false and supposing it true, or believing of what is true that it is false — what the ranks of these too may be. And he made for them an art and canons by which the ranks of these matters are determined, and their degrees of certainty and the rest, so that a man may be set straight on the road of rightness in everything sought, lest he run in wisdom as the men of the sects run in fancy and caprice; for these have erred without being aware of it, and sometimes they have become aware and have passed from one opinion to another, and they are not secure against there arising for them in the second opinion what had arisen in the first, so that they are always either in error or in doubt and perplexity. But when a man knows the things whose nature it is that one should err concerning them, he guards himself against them and is certain in what he has hit the truth upon and not erred; and if it is fancied to him that in something he is slipping, he returns to the canons of the art and knows at once the place of the error, if there is one, and mends it easily.

And he is able, besides that, to rectify that opinion for himself and for another, if he exchanges it and makes it clear to him. This is the art of logic (manṭiq); and the nearest likeness to it that I find among the arts are prosody (ʻarūḍ) and grammar (naḥw), for each one of the two resembles logic in some respect. For there are here metres of poetry that are unsound, and one may err concerning them and, not being a master of the art, suppose them broken; and sometimes he supposes of a broken one among them that it is sound; and when he returns to the canon of the art, he knows the place of the doubt and is able to do what he ought, and is certain of the place of the error, if there is one, and mends what he was inattentive to in it.

The art of grammar resembles it in another respect as well, namely that the relation of the art of grammar to expressions is like the relation of the art of logic to meanings; and just as grammar sets the tongue straight towards rightness of speech and furnishes the canons by which inflection is known, so logic sets the mind straight towards rightness of meanings and furnishes the canons by which the realities are known. And just as the grammarian, though his purpose is the correcting of expressions, also looks into meanings in order to correct them — the grammarian looks into expressions essentially and by the first intention and looks into meanings accidentally and by the second intention, while the logician looks into meanings essentially and by the first intention and looks into expressions accidentally and by the second intention. So the purpose of the sage in the art of logic has been made plain, and that whoever is ignorant of this art necessarily finds that he cannot determine, concerning one who has hit the mark, how he hit it and from what side he hit it, nor, concerning one who has slipped or erred, how and where he slipped or erred; and he is left perplexed among opinions, some of which he pronounces sound without confidence, and some of which he pronounces spurious without insight, and some of which he suspends judgement on, not knowing by what to decide for it; and then he is not secure that what he pronounced sound today will not have brought against it tomorrow what overturns it for him and casts him into doubt about it, nor, concerning what he pronounced spurious, that it will not become sound in his eyes at another time. So he looks upon what is sound in his eyes as something that may turn out corrupt, and upon what is corrupt as something that may turn out sound; and he may well go over to the contrary of what he holds in both matters together, whether by a thought that occurs to him from himself against his first belief or by another's opinion. And when one who claims perfection in knowledge and skill in dialectic presents himself, and by his adroitness makes him so, he has nothing with which to test him: either he thinks well of him and accepts him, or he suspects him and rejects him.

And in either of his two states he is not free of things that come upon his intellect and make him fancy of one thing that it is true and of another that it is false; and logic points him to these places, and makes the sound sound for him and teaches him why it became sound, and pronounces the false spurious and shows him why it became false. So we are compelled to rectify the meanings within ourselves by canons of art that ward off what surrounds us of error, and to rectify the expressions that signify those meanings by convention, lest there arise for another what would lead him into error about them. And both of these are called the art of logic, except that one of them is looked into essentially and the other accidentally, as we have shown.

And when Arisṭū had considered the ranks of the persuasions of the soul and wished to order them and to give them a canon of art, so that by them the realities of things might be reached, he divided that as he had divided the sciences whose exposition preceded. He looked, and behold, the kinds of syllogisms and statements by which the rectification of an opinion is sought, and by which the reality of something sought is reached, whether with ourselves or with another, divide into three divisions: either they are all of them true and certain, with no obscurity in them; or they are all of them false and doubtful; or they are true in some part and false in the other part. And this last kind divides into three divisions: either its truth is greater than its falsity, or its falsity is greater than its truth, or the two matters are equal in it. So all the kinds of syllogisms came to five: the certain, the presumptive, the misleading, the persuasive, and the imaginative. And he composed on each one of these divisions a book, and taught the handling of this way by canons such that no one can convey the disagreement the substance of the thing sought, and no one can recant it, and no suspicion or doubt falls upon it; and he named it the Book of Demonstration. As for the syllogism that is false in the whole of it, it is what makes a thing be fancied to be of a certain form when in truth it is not of it. An example of it is what befalls the eye when it looks; for there befalls the soul, when it looks at the intelligible, what befalls the eye when it looks at the sensible; and sometimes a man fancies of a thing a corrupt fancy and then rushes to act by what that fancy requires, so that the acts come out bad and foul. So he composed on it a book in which he pointed to the modes of these fancyings, whence they occur and how they occur, and he named it the Book of the Poets and the poetic art.

As for that whose truth is greater than its falsity, it is that whose syllogisms are found from well-known things that are neither essential nor substantial to the thing sought and are not what constitutes it; and so a man seeks to produce a strong presumption, whether with himself or with another, until it comes about for him, even if it is not certainty. So he composed on it a book, and pointed to the modes of these presumptions, and that they are true, and whence and how, and that they are false, and whence and how; and he named it Dialectic and the dialectical art. As for that whose falsity is greater than its truth, it is that in which one errs and so fancies of what is not true that it is true, and of one who is not learned that he is learned; and this error comes about in various modes and kinds. So he composed a book in which he pointed to the modes of the equivocations and the glossings-over and the fallacies, how they occur and whence, and he named it the sophistical art. And this is wisdom in the Greek tongue, derived from sūf, which is wisdom, and from isṭīs, which is equivocation and glossing-over; so its meaning was the glossed-over wisdom. And everyone who is capable of equivocation and glossing-over, whether in himself, by making it be fancied that he is a sage when he is no sage, is a sophist. It is not as the Muslims of Islam suppose, that in ancient time there was a man called Sūfisṭā who rejected the realities of the existents, and that he had a party who upheld his doctrine and were named after him; for this is a supposition with no foundation. There never was in the past any man called Sūfisṭā, nor was anyone named by it, nor did any determinate group uphold this opinion; it is only that one is referred to the art of dialectic and so is called a dialectician — not that there is there a man called Dialectic.

As for that whose falsity is equal to its truth, it is that by which some persuasion is sought in whatever opinion it may be, and that the hearer should come to rest in what is said to him and give it some measure of credence, which falls short of strong presumption. So he composed on it a book in which he pointed to the modes of these persuasions, and whence and how they occur, and he named it the Book of Rhetoric. And these are the five books of logic.

But when Arisṭū looked into the syllogism, he found that some of it is common to these branches and some of it is proper to each one of them. So for the first syllogism, the general one common to all five arts, he made a book which he named the Book of the Syllogism; and this book is found in the old translation as two, one of them the Book of the Syllogism and the other the Book of Demonstration, which in Greek is Anūlūṭīqā the First and Anūlūṭīqā the Second.

Then he looked into the syllogism, and behold, it is composed of expressions and meanings; and the least of syllogistic statements is what is composed of two expressions at a time, and the least of syllogistic meanings is what is of two intelligibles at a time, while the most of them is undetermined.

And these statements composed of two expressions have as their parts, of necessity, single expressions; so the art necessarily divided for him into eight divisions, that being by way of analysis. Then, when he travelled it by way of composition, he began with the single expressions that signify the genera of the single meanings and made a book on them, confining these expressions to ten genera of meanings and then dividing each one of them into its species; and he named it the Book of the Categories, which is the one known as the Book of Fāṭīqūriyās. Then he made second a book in which he mentioned the composed statements, and he named it the Book of Bārīzmīniyās, that is, Expression. And he made third the Book of the Syllogism which we mentioned, in which he taught the canons of the statements by which the syllogisms common to the five arts are made plain, and he named it Anūlūṭīqā the First. And he made fourth the book which he named the Demonstration, which is Anūlūṭīqā the Second, in which he taught the canons of the syllogisms in which no deception occurs and in which that is not possible, these being the certain ones. And he made fifth a book in which he mentioned the canons of the syllogisms taken from well-known matters, and how the questioning or the answering goes in this way, and in which he taught the canons by which this art is completed in the most excellent and most perfect way possible; and he named it Ṭūbiqā, which is the Book of Dialectic. And he made sixth the book in which he mentioned the canons of these things by which one is deceived away from the truth and thrown into perplexity, and brought forward the matters the glosser-over aims at, and made plain the things whose corruption shows, and how one guards against them; and he named it Sūfisṭīqā, that is, the glossed-over wisdom. And he made seventh a book in which he mentioned the canons of the things that persuade by address, and brought forward all by which this art is completed, so that a man may be in it more perfect and more penetrating; and he named it Dīṭūrīqā. And he made eighth a book in which he mentioned the canons of the expressions that work upon the imagination, and numbered all by which this art is completed, and divided it into its species and its kinds, and named it Fūrīṭīqā, that is, Poetry — so that this art might be completed according to these divisions. And his first purpose in it was the demonstrative syllogism, but division and ordering required what we have mentioned; and again, the things that are known by the way of demonstration are few by comparison with what is known by the other syllogisms, so it was necessary that he order them and teach their ways; and again, some of them are the ways of demonstration and some of them protect it and ward off from it.

As for the three that are at the beginning of the art, they are those that lead to it; the last four are those by which it is defended, lest what is not of it be confused with it. And the noblest of these books is the Book of Demonstration, because it is the first thing intended; it fell in the fourth division of necessity, as we mentioned above, and the remaining books were made either as introductions and prefaces to it or as defences of it. As for the three that precede it, they are the introductions; and as for the four that come after it, they are those that fortify it and distinguish it and defend it from the ways that give the impression of leading to what it leads to. Along with that, if a man aims to be a strong dialectician, or an eloquent orator, or a poet who splits open his theme, he inclines towards what he seeks and acquires the book in which the canons of that art were composed, so as to become by them in the highest degree of it and the loftiest rank in it. And if a man confines himself to the four books, that suffices him for the learning of wisdom and the reading of the books after them, which are the books we have enumerated and whose division by the sage we have expounded. He began among them with the books that are of those possessing matter, and these are of the natural matters.

And the last of the books are those on the matters abstracted in matter, since the natural things are sensible to us, and nearer to us, and we are more familiar with them and know them better, and from them we can ascend to what is after them. So he composed on it a book in which he mentioned the matters common to all natural things, both what among them is under generation and what is not under generation, and he named it the Physical Hearing (al-Samāʻ al-ṭabīʻī); and he composed a book on what is proper to the things that are not under generation, and he named it the Book of the Heaven. Then he divided the things that are under generation, and made a book on what is common to all the things possessing generation, and he named it the Book of Generation and Corruption; and he made a book on what is proper, in the earth, to that which has a soul and has no senses, and named it the Book of Plants; and a book on what is proper to those possessing souls that have senses, and named it the Book of Animals. And when he wished to ascend in the natural things, which are the matters possessing matter, to the matters that have no matter, he found between these two stations matters having a share in nature and a share in what is after nature, so he made on them his book On the Soul and his book On Sense and the Sensible. Then he made, on what is after nature, his books upon which he inscribed the letters, those known as the Alif, the Bāʼ and what comes after them; some of them have been translated into Arabic and some have not been translated, except that in what has been translated there is much wealth and a full sufficiency. And when he had done in the theoretical part these great works and arranged them in this arrangement, he completed in the practical part this very same work; and that is that he divided it into what is proper to man in himself and what is proper to what is outside him, and this second divides into two divisions, one of them the governance of the household and the other the governance of cities, and he made on each one a book. As for what is proper to man in his own essence, that is his book on ethics, a very great book of many benefits, which teaches how a man acquires an excellent endowment and a praiseworthy disposition from which fine acts and well-pleasing works issue.

As for his books on the governance of the household and of cities, nothing has been translated into Arabic except what has been found of his book on the governance of cities, which is our discourse, and I have mentioned it in the catalogue of his books. And after these books he has epistles and books which he named the Memoranda (al-Tadhākīr), and they are many, according to what is mentioned and recounted in the catalogue of his compositions. He also has books on the mathematical sciences (al-taʻālīm), of which nothing has been translated — except that in the order that came out into Arabic and the arrangement which he arranged there is great wealth and full repose for whoever wishes to perfect his essence and to set his face towards his aim so as to reach it quickly. As for the measure of the time to be assigned for one who wishes to learn wisdom according to the arrangement of this sage, who has done us good and conferred a benefit upon us, that is according to the measure of his care and his diligence and the aids that circumstance gives him — I mean by them that he be keen and retentive, in possession of the books and of the master who opens the way, and in sufficiency of livelihood, so that he not be occupied by it away from what he aims at.

And then the passing away of the impediments by which a man is not ⟨...⟩ amid the accidents of this world and its cares, and the sicknesses of the soul and of the body and their conjunction, and the wariness now of the common people and now of the ruler, and the watchfulness of the people of the town; for men, as the sayer says, are the enemies of what they do not know, and it is their way to speak ill of the people of excellence and to be hostile to everyone who differs from them in their doctrines and their purposes, and to aim at them with everything hateful and injurious. So when he is safe from these accidents, and the native talent and the causes we have mentioned are gathered for him, how near is his arrival at his desire, and his repose from the toil of his own kind, and his winning of the treasures that have been stored up! And the span of that is, approximately, between ten years and twenty years — this if the world occupies him with some occupation; for it is not admissible to suppose of a man that he holds himself apart and draws himself in upon knowledge and allows his body no repose and his soul no share of the delights in what is comely and fine; and were he to attempt that, he would lose it, or be cut off short of his goal.

Some of Arisṭū's associates and the teachers of his books have held that the teacher of them should begin with the books on ethics, so that his soul may be disciplined and cleansed of the turbidity of the appetites, and the working of its affections upon it be lightened, so that it becomes able to receive wisdom; and that he should acknowledge, with some measure of acknowledgement, the leaving off of immersion in the appetites and the forsaking of the bodily pleasures, and know that most of them are basenesses and vices, and so hold himself above them. Then he should look into something of the mathematical sciences, so as to know the way of demonstration and be trained in it and grow familiar with its paths, and leave off going deep into them until another time, for before him lies a distant purpose and a slow course. Then he should look into logic, which is an instrument in everything one aims at; then he should look into the natural things and what is after them, in the order that preceded. And when a man reaches the last rank, he comes upon the realities of the existents and assigns them their stations, and his soul takes on their form; and when the soul has taken on the form of the realities of things, it intellects them with a complete intellection; and when it has intellected them, it takes on the intelligible forms, and the traces of the accidents that are in the natural things pass away from it — I mean the things that revolve — and the forms of the intelligible everlasting things are obtained, and the intellect is united with them, so that they become one thing. And it is of the nature of the intellect that its part becomes a whole, as that is made plain to him when he reaches it. So when his soul parts from his body, it passes over to the second existence, which is his last end and his furthest perfection. And this state is very hard to conceive and far from what we behold and are used to, and it cannot be uttered, and nothing is adequate to it save the road by which he who travels it upon the highway we have set out arrives at it. And when it is represented by the likenesses that imitate it, drawn from what we are used to and familiar with, there arise in the likenesses contradictions and impossibilities, for the reason that the likeness is in no respect the thing likened; and it is on that account that mention of it has been passed over. All the same, I have composed upon it a discourse in which I have exerted myself that the clearest possible should shine out from it, and I have set it apart in a separate section. When this section has come into his presence, and he has turned his eye over it repeatedly and called for what follows it, and I have learned that it has found its place, I shall convey it to him first, God willing and with His help; and there is no power save through Him, and He is our sufficiency and the best of guardians. And blessings upon His prophet Muḥammad and upon all his house.

The book is completed, with the help of Him, the Exalted.