he replied that it was impossible for him to take as his pattern an Imam whose heart was full of blood, indicating by this expression the vileness of one who took a share in the work of worldly men of learning.”[25] Al-Ghazali must have begun his education at a very early age, and his studies at Tus met with such success that he went to the larger educational centre of Jurjan before the age of twenty, a distance of over one hundred miles, and no inconsiderable journey at that time. In Al-Ghazali’s autobiography we have a glimpse of how he himself conceived the growth of a child in wisdom and stature. “The first sense revealed to man,” he says, “is touch, by means of which he perceives a certain group of qualities—heat, cold, moist, dry. The sense of touch does not perceive colours and forms, which are for it as though they did not exist. Next comes the sense of sight, which makes him acquainted with colours and forms; that is to say, with that which occupies the highest rank in the world of sensation. The sense of hearing succeeds, and then the senses of smell and taste. When the human being can elevate himself above the world of sense, towards the age of seven, he receives the faculty of discrimination; he enters then upon a new phase of existence and can experience, thanks to this faculty, impressions, superior to those of the senses, which do not occur in the sphere of sensation.” Al-Ghazali must have been an early riser from his youth. In his “Beginner’s Guide to Religion and Morals” (Al Badayet) he writes: “When you awaken from sleep, endeavour to arise before early dawn, and may the first thing that enters your heart and your tongue be the remembrance of God Most High, saying, ‘Thanks be to God who hath given us life after the death of sleep. To Him do we return. He hath awakened us and awakened all nature. The greatness and the power belong to God; the majesty and the dominion to the Lord of the worlds. He hath awakened us to the religion of Islam and the testimony of His unity, and the religion of His Prophet Mohammed and the sect of our father Abraham, who was a _Hanif_ and a Moslem, and not a polytheist. O God, I ask Thee that Thou wouldst this day send me all good and deliver me from all evil. By Thee, O God, do we arise from sleep, and by Thee do we reach the even-tide. In Thee do we live and die and to Thee do we return.’ And when you put on your garments, remember that God desires you to cover your nakedness with them and to show forth God’s beauty to those around you.” In another place in the same little volume he again inculcates early rising by saying: “Know that the night and the day consist of twenty-four hours. Let therefore your sleep during the night and day be not more than eight hours; for it will suffice you to think after you have lived sixty years that you have lost twenty years of it solely in sleep.”