Middle ways, though proverbially safe, are difficult to walk in; and only by a _tour de force_ can the Koran be brought into line with the esoteric doctrine which the Sūfīs derive from it. Undoubtedly they have done a great work for Islam. They have deepened and enriched the lives of millions by ruthlessly stripping off the husk of religion and insisting that its kernel must be sought, not in any formal act, but in cultivation of spiritual feelings and in purification of the inward man. This was a legitimate and most fruitful development of the Prophet’s teaching. But the Prophet was a strict monotheist, while the Sūfīs, whatever they may pretend or imagine, are theosophists, pantheists, or monists. When they speak and write as believers in the dogmas of positive religion, they use language which cannot be reconciled with such a theory of unity as we are now examining. ʿAfīfuddīn al-Tilimsānī, from whose commentary on Niffarī I have given some extracts in this chapter, said roundly that the whole Koran is polytheism--a perfectly just statement from the monistic point of view, though few Sūfīs have dared to be so explicit. The mystic Unitarians admit the appearance of contradiction, but deny its reality. “The Law and the Truth” (they might say) “are the same thing in different aspects. The Law is for you, the Truth for us. In addressing you we speak according to the measure of your understanding, since what is meat for gnostics is poison to the uninitiated, and the highest mysteries ought to be jealously guarded from profane ears. It is only human reason that sees the single as double, and balances the Law against the Truth. Pass away from the world of opposites and become one with God, who has no opposite.” The gnostic recognises that the Law is valid and necessary in the moral sphere. While good and evil remain, the Law stands over both, commanding and forbidding, rewarding and punishing. He knows, on the other hand, that only God really exists and acts: therefore, if evil really exists, it must be divine, and if evil things are really done, God must be the doer of them. The conclusion is false because the hypothesis is false. Evil has no real existence; it is not-being, which is the privation and absence of being, just as darkness is the absence of light. “Once,” said Nūrī, “I beheld the Light, and I fixed my gaze upon it until I became the Light.” No wonder that such illuminated souls, supremely indifferent to the shadow-shows of religion and morality in a phantom world, are ready to cry with Jalāluddīn: “The man of God is made wise by the Truth, The man of God is not learned from book. The man of God is beyond infidelity and faith, To the man of God right and wrong are alike.”