if people call you “poor” and recognize your claim, see that you perform the obligations of the path of poverty; and if they give you another name, inconsistent with what you profess, do not accept it, but fulfil your professions. The basest of men is he who is thought to be devoted to God, but really is not; and the noblest is he who is not thought to be devoted to God, but really is. The former resembles an ignorant physician, who pretends to cure people, but only makes them worse, and when he falls ill himself needs another physician to prescribe for him; and the latter is like one who is not known to be a physician, and does not concern himself with other folk, but employs his skill in order to maintain his own health. One of the moderns has said: _Al-faqr `adam^{un} bilá wujúd^{in}_, “Poverty is not-being without existence.” To interpret this saying is impossible, because what is non-existent does not admit of being explained. On the surface it would seem that, according to this dictum, poverty is nothing, but such is not the case; the explanations and consensus of the Saints of God are not founded on a principle that is essentially non-existent. The meaning here is not “the not-being of the essence”, but “the not-being of that which contaminates the essence”; and all human attributes are a source of contamination: when that is removed, the result is annihilation of the attributes (_faná-yi ṣifat_), which deprives the sufferer of the instrument whereby he attains, or fails to attain, his object; but his not-going to the essence (_`adam-i rawish ba-`ayn_) seems to him annihilation of the essence and casts him into perdition. Footnote 30: The celebrated mystic of Herát, who died in 481 A.H. See Professor Browne’s _Literary History of Persia_, vol. ii, p. 269. I have met with some scholastic philosophers who, failing to understand the drift of this saying, laughed at it and declared it to be nonsense; and also with certain pretenders (to Ṣúfiism) who made nonsense of it and were firmly convinced of its truth, although they had no grasp of the fundamental principle. Both parties are in the wrong: one ignorantly denies the truth, and the other makes ignorance a state (of perfection). Now the expressions “not-being” (_`adam_) and “annihilation” (_faná_), as they are used by Ṣúfís, denote the disappearance of a blameworthy instrument (_álat-i madhmúm_) and disapproved attribute in the course of seeking a praiseworthy attribute; they do not signify the search for non-reality (_`adam-i ma`ní_) by means of an instrument which exists.