moment I was heedless, and he was removed from me a journey of a hundred years_,” is applicable to such a state. Rustam’s[291] bringing back Kai Káus to his throne from the forest into which he had fallen, means, his bringing back intelligence into the king’s soul, and turning him back from the desert (lit. meadow), of natural infirmity: Kai Kaus therefore, by direction of Kai Nishin, his younger brother, but his elder in purity of faith and good works, remained forty days in retirement, until in the state of sleep, through the awakening of his heart, he beheld this heavenly vision. They also assert, whatever modern writers have declared, relative to _Khizr_[292] and Iskander, having penetrated into the regions of darkness, where the former discovered the fountain of life immortal, means, that the Iskander, or the intellectual soul, through the energy of the Khizr, or reason, discovered, whilst in the state of human darkness, the water of life, or the knowledge of the rational sciences, or the science which forms the proper object of intellect――as to what they say about Iskander’s returning back empty-handed, by that is meant, that to expect eternal duration in this evanescent abode being altogether absurd, he consequently could not attain that object, and therefore departed to the next world. What they record about Khizr’s drinking of that water, means, that the perfection of intellect exists not through the medium of body, and that reason has no need of body, or any thing corporeal, either as essence or attribute.