“Endeavor to acquire praise worthy qualities: for, in the field of destiny, Thy resurrection shall be in conformity with thy qualities.” This threefold division they call “hell.” The number of the stories of hell, according to the followers of the law, is seven; that of the simple elements, four; and that of the compound elements, three: altogether seven. Every soul, on leaving the elemental world, enters into one of the stories of hell. According to the _Masháyíns_, “Peripatetics,” the human soul which, during its connection with the body has contracted bad habits, becomes afflicted and distressed by the impurity of such human attributes as are accounted defects of the mind: on account of the extinction of sensual pleasure which had grown into a fixed habit, the soul is bewildered, and its base customs and qualities bear manifestly upon it under the guise of a serpent, a scorpion, a burning fire, and by all the torments which are recorded in the law-book, whilst, on the contrary, the noble habits of the virtuous shine under the guise of _Huris_, _Kásurs_, sons, and youths, and in all the blessings of heaven. _Sirát´_, “the bridge of the last judgment,” signifies nothing else but the temperature of power; as it has been established in the doctrine of Ethics: for instance, the excess of courage is temerity, a deficiency in it is cowardice; a medium between both is valour and, as to keep the middle tenor, is very difficult, this has been emblematized by something which is finer than a hair and sharper than the edge of a sword, and by three arches, which indicate the due mixture of three powers, viz.: knowledge, courage, and lust. Under hell is meant elemental nature. We shall pass to the interpretation of the gates of heaven, the number of which is eight; that of the gates of hell, seven. It is established that there are five external senses and five internal; but all of them are not apt to perceive without the assistance of inference and imagination; because it is imagination which perceives the forms, and inference completes the perception of sensible things. The two internal with the five external senses, make seven. If they attend not to the commands of reason, each of them goes for imprisonment to that hell which is under the heaven of the moon, and if they listen to these commands, they reach with the ninth rank of intelligence the eight gates of heaven for salvation and emancipation, as well as enter the Paradise which is among the heavens. “As to him who disobeyed, and preferred the worldly life, hell shall be his abode; and as to him who feared the being of the Lord and refused to give up his soul to concupiscence, Paradise shall be his abode.” * * * * *