Lighthouse Books for Translation and Publishing: A Compendium on the Soul (ePub)

My present English rendering of this Essay by Avicena on the Powers of the Soul has been made directly and finally from the Arabic Original as given in the Landauer Text, with constant consultation however of both the Landauer German translation and the MacDonald English construe: it has been made not for European scholars and Arabists but solely for pupil students in Egypt, which circumstance called in a great measure for the use of two or more nearly synonymous words where the Arabic original often has but one only. Indeed I am not ashamed to say further that in some places I have failed to follow the drift and understand the purport of Ibn Sînâ's argument; so that in such passages I am only too conscious of how far my rendering may perhaps have wandered from the right and true sense. But the author himself declares that psychology is one of the deepest and darkest of studies; and he relates of himself in his autobiography that he had read one of Aristotle's writings forty times over, until he had got it by heart, and yet had failed to see the point. And he goes on to tell of how it was that he one day stumbled across and then read over al-Fârâbî's "Maqâçid Aristotle," whereupon mental light dawned upon him as to the purport of that writing.

The end of the next year's session will in all likelihood bring with it the cessation of my connection with the Khedivial School of Law. More than this: I am getting well on in life, so that this translation will most likely be the last serious work that I shall ever perform in the service of Young Egypt. Such reflections awaken in my inmost soul all sorts of feelings and thoughts about the shortness and fleetingness of this earthly life, the happiness of childhood and youth, the darkness of the grave, and the utter despair that will surely engulf the soul at the last hours, unless-mark my words-unless the strong arm of our Heavenly Father lay hold upon this soul that is now within me, and take it off and up, to be joined unto the millions of souls of all, all those who have gone before, whither too shall follow so many, many other millions; in a word, unless GOD have mercy upon me, even as He has had mercy upon my forefathers and mothers since many generations. This hope in His mercy and grace is my ever-strengthening prop and stay, the older and feebler I get. Nor will any of those for whom I write these lines ever find a stronger or a better. And the time will very soon come when each and every one of them, however long may be his life here below, will surely need it, to save him from sinking into the black nothingness of doubt, indifference, and despair.

And the Human Soul possessing the nobility of the highest power, which is Reason, participates in the Divine Nature, after the manner of an eternal Intelligence: for the Soul is ennobled and denuded of matter by that Sovereign Power in proportion as the Divine Light of Truth shines into it, as into an Angel; and Man is therefore called by the Philosophers the Divine Animal.