Now, the Principle of Moderation means simply that you should not allow your passions to influence your actions unduly, nor should you allow your reason to control your passions unduly; but you should ever try to hold the balance even between them in order that the resultant action might be quite right--might discharge the three-fold duty of man,--and might thereby tend (be it in ever so small a degree) to the perfection of the individual and the race. If at any time your passion over-rides your reason, you commit Sin; and on the contrary, if you exercise your reason so much as to stifle your passion altogether, you fall into Error. If you permit neither reason, nor passion to discharge their respective functions, you lapse into Inaction which is again an Error. Undue suppression of Passion, and over-exercise of Reason, as well as non-exercise of both--militate against the Principle of Moderation, the essence of which is (as Aristotle pointed out) that no power should tyrannize over any other in our constitution. What is "due" or "undue" exercise of a power, is a question which your common sense should decide in each case with reference to the person acting and the circumstances under which he acts. The only general rule that can be laid down is implied in the ideal of perfection explained in the previous Notes. Every exercise of any of your mental or bodily power is right or wrong according as it does, or does not, tend to the perfection of yourselves or your offspring, and your community or race. I have only to add that the Principle of Moderation, in the form in which I have roughly described it, is fully recognized by such up-to-date writers on the Science of Ethics as Sir Leslie Stephen, one of the two talented Editors of the Dictionary of National Biography. _Maxim of the Mean or Average._ 2. Addressing Muslims the Qur'an says:-- [Arabic: wa-ka-ḏālika ǧaʿalnākum ʾummatan wasaṭan li-takūnū šuhadāʾa ʿalā n-nās] "We have thus made you a middle nation (= a moderate people) in order that you should be an example to mankind."--i. 137. One of the ways in which God has made Muslims a moderate people is by enjoining them to avoid extreme courses of action and to adopt the middle or the mean course whenever and wherever it is possible[76].