Know that, when individuals of mankind want to associate in the concerns of life, they find it indispensable to have recourse to customs, regulations, and religious faith, in order that they may be concordant, and that oppression may be excluded from their transactions and associations, and the order of the world preserved. It is requisite to refer the customs and regulations to God, and to proclaim that they proceed from God, in order that all may adopt them. On that account the necessity of theology and of a prophetic mission became evident, in order that the institutes for the government of the creatures may be established, and, by means of mildness and severity, men might be induced to be concordant, and the different conditions of the world arranged. And such an institutor is named “illustrious sage;” his precepts are likewise celebrated; among the eminent moderns, his title is that of “prophet,” or “legislator,” and that of his precepts “the law.” But his deputy, who is a judge, ought to be a person distinguished by divine grace, that he may promote the instruction and arrange the affairs of mankind; such a man is called by the wise “an universal ruler,” and his precepts are entitled “the practice of the empire;” the moderns gave him the name of _Imám_, and to his precepts that of _Imámet_. The unusual customs, which are called _mâjazát_,’ “miracles,”[126] and _kirámát_, “prodigies,”[127] have been submitted to investigations from which it results that the vital spirit, or soul, is the cause of the accidents which are manifested in our body, such as anger and violent emotion. It may be that the vitality attains such a force in every manner, that its relation to this world of depravity becomes of that nature as is our relation to our own bodies: then its desire proves the cause of the accidents; it brings about what it wishes in this world. On that account, all the learned agree on this point, that, in every respect, the soul is of an extreme ingenuity and sagacity, so that, of whatsoever kind the knowledge may be to which it turns its attention, it renders itself master in one day of the whole science, and the power of its memory is such, that it recollects whatever it has heard but once, and, to whatsoever object it directs its look, the soul will give an account of it, of the past as well as of the present. Another power of the soul is to know, either in a dream or by _ilhám_, “inspiration,”[128] an event before it takes place. A further power of the soul is, to discover the purport of whatever it sees. All this together is the attribute of the soul. When, on account of pious austerity and struggles in the cause of God, one’s sensual spirit is kept in due temperature, it becomes like an essence of heaven, and his rational soul borrows as much as possible from the heavenly spirit, in the same manner as a polished mirror receives the image from a painted surface. Whatever comes forth from the rational soul in the way of