The Institutes of Akbar 73.3

73.3

When a ray of God’s knowledge falls on man’s soul, it is carried by the mind to the realm of thought, which is the intermediate station between that which is conscious of individual existence (mujarrad) and that which is material (maddí). The result is a concrete thing mixed with the absolute, or an absolute thing mixed with that which is concrete. This compound steps forward on man’s tongue, and enters, with the assistance of the conveying air, into the windows of the ears of others. It then drops the burden of its concrete component, and returns as a single ray, to its old place, the realm of thought. But the heavenly traveller occasionally gives his course a different direction by means of man’s fingers, and having passed along the continent of the pen and crossed the ocean of the ink, alights on the pleasant expanse of the page, and returns through the eye of the reader to its wonted habitation. As the letter is a representation of an articulate sound, I think it necessary to give some information regarding the latter.