If before it mourned, I had mourned my love for Su'da, then should I have healed my soul, nor had afterward to repent. But it mourned before me, and its mourning excited mine, and I said, "The superiority is to the one that is first." Now I hope I shall not be, in respect of the playful style that I display, and the source that I repair to, like the beast that scratched up its death with its hoof, or he who cut off his nose with his own hand; so as to be joined to those who are "most of all losers in their works, whose course on earth has been in vain, while they count that they have done fair deeds." Since I know that although he who is intelligent and liberal will connive at me, and he who is friendly and partial may defend me, I can hardly escape from the simpleton who is ignorant, or the spiteful man who feigns ignorance; who will detract from me on account of this composition, and will give out that it is among the things forbidden of the law. But yet, whoever scans matters with the eye of intelligence, and makes good his insight into principles, will rank these Assemblies in the order of useful writings, and class them with the fables that relate to brutes and lifeless objects. Now none was ever heard of whose hearing shrank from such tales, or who held as sinful those who related them at ordinary times. Moreover, since deeds depend on intentions, and in these lies the effectiveness of religious obligations, what fault is there in one who composes stories for instruction, not for display, and whose purpose in them is the education and not the fablings? Nay, is he not in the position of one who assents to doctrine, and "guides to the right path"? Yet am I content if I may carry my caprice, and then be quit of it, without any debt against me or to me. And of God I seek to be helped in what I purpose, and to be kept from that which makes defective, and to be led to that which leads aright. For there is no refuge but to him, and no seeking of succor but in him, and no prospering but from him, and no sanctuary but he. On him I rely, and to him I have recourse. THE FIRST ASSEMBLY (CALLED "OF SAN'A")[15]