Kremer's enthusiasm may have carried him too far; for the poet, as Professor Margoliouth says, was unconscious of the value of his suggestions, unable to follow them out, and unable to adhere to them consistently. Although he builded better than he knew, the constructive side of his philosophy was overshadowed by the negative and destructive side, so that his pure and lofty morality leaves but a faint impression which soon dies away in louder, continually recurring voices of doubt and despair. Abu ’l-‘Alá is a firm monotheist, but his belief in God amounted, as it would seem, to little beyond a conviction that all things are governed by inexorable Fate, whose mysteries none may fathom and from whose omnipotence there is no escape. He denies the Resurrection of the dead, _e.g._:-- "We laugh, but inept is our laughter; We should weep and weep sore, Who are shattered like glass, and thereafter Re-moulded no more!"[588] Since Death is the ultimate goal of mankind, the sage will pray to be delivered as speedily as possible from the miseries of life and refuse to inflict upon others what, by no fault of his own, he is doomed to suffer:-- "Amends are richly due from sire to son: What if thy children rule o'er cities great? That eminence estranges them the more From thee, and causes them to wax in hate, Beholding one who cast them into Life's Dark labyrinth whence no wit can extricate."[589] There are many passages to the same effect, showing that Abu ’l-‘Alá regarded procreation as a sin and universal annihilation as the best hope for humanity. He acted in accordance with his opinions, for he never married, and he is said to have desired that the following verse should be inscribed on his grave:-- "This wrong was by my father done To me, but ne'er by me to one."[590] Hating the present life and weary of its burdens, yet seeing no happier prospect than that of return to non-existence, Abu ’l-‘Alá can scarcely have disguised from himself what he might shrink openly to avow--that he was at heart, not indeed an atheist, but wholly incredulous of any Divine revelation. Religion, as he conceives it, is a product of the human mind, in which men believe through force of habit and education, never stopping to consider whether it is true.