One would like to know more of a book which Mr. Charles M. Doughty found
a certain reputed saint “poring and half weeping over,” the argument of
which was “God’s creatures the beasts,” while its purpose was to show
that every beast yields life-worship unto God. Even if this Damascus
saint was not very saintly (as the author of “Arabia Deserta” hints),
yet it is interesting to note that this subject should have appeared to
a would-be new Messiah the most important he could choose for his
Gospel.
A Persian poet, Azz’ Eddin Elmocadessi, advises man to learn from the
birds,
“Virtues that may gild thy name;
And their faults if thou wouldst scan,
Know thy failings are the same.”
The recognition in animals of most human qualities in a distinct though
it may be a limited form underlies all Eastern animal-lore and gives it
a force and a reality even when it deals with extravagant fancies. There
is a broad difference between the power of feeling _for_ animals and the
power of feeling _with_ them. The same difference moulds the sentiments
of man to man: nine men in ten can feel for their fellow-humans, but
scarcely one man in ten can feel with them. They even know it, and they
say ungrammatically, “I feel the greatest sympathy _for_ so and so.” An
instance of true _mitempfindung_, of insight into the very soul of a
creature, exists in an Arabian poem by Lebid, who was one of the most
interesting figures of the period in which the destinies of the Arab
race were cast. He was the glory of the Arabs, not only on account of
his faultless verse, but also because of his noble character. It is told
of him that whenever an east wind blew, he provided a feast for the
poor. Himself a pre-Islamic theist, he hailed the Prophet as the
inspired enunciator of the creed he had held imperfectly and in private.
All his poems were composed in the “Ignorance”; on being asked for a
poem after his conversion at ninety years of age, he copied out a
chapter of the Koran, and said, “God has given me this in exchange for
poesy.” I do not think this meant that he despised the poet’s art, but
that now, when he could no longer exercise it, he had what was still
more precious.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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