There has been from the earliest ages of Islam a movement which exists to this day. It is a kind of mysticism, known as Sufiism. It has been especially prevalent among the Persians. It is a re-action from the burden of a rigid law, and a wearisome ritual. It has now existed for a thousand years, and if it has the element of progress in it, if it is the salt of Islam some fruit should now be seen. But what is Sufiism? The term Sufi is most probably derived from the Arabic word Suf, "wool," of which material the garments worn by Eastern ascetics used to be generally made. Some persons, however, derive it from the Persian, Suf, "pure," or the Greek [Greek: sophia], "wisdom." Tasawwuf, or Sufiism, is the abstract form of the word, and is, according to Sir W. Jones, and other learned orientalists, a figurative mode, borrowed mainly from the Indian philosophers of the Vedanta school, of expressing the fervour of devotion. The chief idea is that the souls of men differ in degree, but not {88} in kind, from the Divine Spirit, of which they are emanations, and to which they will ultimately return. The Spirit of God is in all He has made, and it in Him. He alone is perfect love, beauty, etc.--hence love to him is the only _real_ thing; all else is illusion. Sa'di says: "I swear by the truth of God, that when He showed me His glory all else was illusion." This present life is one of separation from the beloved. The beauties of nature, music, and art revive in men the divine idea, and recall their affections from wandering from Him to other objects. These sublime affections men must cherish, and by abstraction concentrate their thoughts on God, and so approximate to His essence, and finally reach the highest stage of bliss--absorption into the Eternal. The true end and object of human life is to lose all consciousness of individual existence--to sink "in the ocean of Divine Life, as a breaking bubble is merged into the stream on the surface of which it has for a moment risen."[80] Sufis, who all accept Islam as a divinely established religion, suppose that long before the creation of the world a contract was made by the Supreme Soul with the assembled world of spirits, who are parts of it. Each spirit was addressed separately, thus: "Art thou not with thy Lord?" that is, bound to him by a solemn contract. To this they all answered with one voice, "Yes." Another account says that the seed of theosophy (m'arifat) was placed in the ground in the time of Adam; that the plant {89} came forth in the days of Noah, was in flower when Abraham was alive and produced fruit before Moses passed away. The grapes of this noble plant were ripe in the time of Jesus, but it was not till the age of Muhammad that pure wine was made from them. Then those intoxicated with it, having attained to the highest degree of the knowledge of God, could forget their own personality and say:--"Praise to me, is there any greater than myself? I am the Truth."