Page 18 - Book of Crates

“God preserve us from error!” he exclaimed, “Everything that they
exposed is exact, and they did not say anything else but the truth, but
they used names that could establish a confusion about the truth. Some
designated it according to its taste, others according to its characters, or
its utility, without worrying about what was beyond. Know, Oh Cratès
Es-Semaoui (the Celestial one), that you are not the only philosopher
who made great efforts to demonstrate the truth. The difficulty that they
found to solve these things for the ignorant, impelled them to verbosity.
Also they have said what was necessary and what was not necessary.
The ignorant treated like a toy these books that they had between their
hands. They turned the pages in derision and rejected them as
disastrous, off-putting, obscuring and ridiculous, in what touches on the
knowledge of the truth.”

“How”, I replied to him, “would one be rebuffed by reading these
books and these volumes, in which one finds words that seem to say the
same things and which differ however in their application? One is
disturbed not to know what is the sense that it is necessary to adopt, the
lesson of which one has need.”

“I am going to tell you, oh my son”, he answered, “from where
comes these mistakes and these fatal problems. All men necessarily
belong to one of the following two categories: the first consists of all
individuals whose spirits are directed solely toward wisdom, the study
of the science, the teaching of the laws of nature, the affinities of the
latter, their advantages and their disadvantages. One who belongs to
this category is preoccupied in having books, in seeking for them, in
dedicating his spirit, his soul and his body to spreading the concepts
that they contain. When he finds something there clear and precise, he
thanks God for it; if he meets a dark point there, he makes all his
efforts to have an exact idea of it by his studies, to arrive thus to the
goal that he intended and act consequently. In the second category, one
will place the man who dreams only about his appetites, who does not
worry about this world, nor of the future life; for that one, the books
will only increase his ignorance and his blindness; as he must
necessarily be heavy of spirit and become more and more so.”

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