Page:Alchemyofhappiness en.djvu/82

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74
Ghazzali's Alchemy of Happiness.

knowledge, they are all of them exceedingly important and necessary. Delight in knowledge, delight in worship, delight in prayer and delight in communion with God are things of this world, but still they are for the sake of the future world. It follows, therefore, that the pleasures of the world are not all of them blamable, but only those which entail punishment in the future world, or which are not in the path to paradise, and so the apostle declares, "The world is a curse and all that is in it is a curse, except the remembrance of God and that which is the object of his love."



CHAPTER IV.

On Knowledge of the Future World.


Know, beloved, that we cannot understand the future world, until we know what death is: and we cannot know what death is, until we know what life is: nor can we understand what life is, until we know what the spirit is....

If you wish, O student of the mysteries of God, to learn the essential facts about death, you must know that there are in man two kinds of spirit, one of which is of the nature of the spirit in animals and which we call animal spirit, and the other is of the nature of the spirit of angels, which we call human spirit. The fountain of the animal spirit is in that heart which is in the left side of the breast, and is a piece of flesh. It is a delicate exhalation from the humors within the animal. Its constitution is fixed in certain