opies of His
attributes." In a remarkable passage anticipating the theory of
Evolution he portrays man ascending through the various stages of
existence back to his Origin:--

From the inorganic we developed into the vegetable kingdom,
Dying from the vegetable we rose to animal,
And leaving the animal, we became man.
Then what fear that death will lower us?
The next transition will make us an angel,
Then shall we rise from angels and merge in the Nameless,
All existence proclaims, "Unto Him shall we return."

Elsewhere he says:--

Soul becomes pregnant by the Soul of souls
And brings forth Christ;
Not that Christ Who walked on land and sea,
But that Christ Who is above space.

The work of man in this world is to polish his soul from the rust of
concupiscence and self-love, till, like a clear mirror, it reflects God.
To this end he must bear patiently the discipline appointed:--

If thou takest offence at every rub,
How wilt thou become a polished mirror?

He must choose a "pir," or spiritual guide who may represent the Unseen
God for him; this guide he must obey and imitate not from slavish
compulsion, but from an inward and spontaneous attraction, for though it
may be logically inconsistent with Pantheism, Jalaluddin is a thorough
believer in free-will. Love is the keynote of all his teaching, and
without free-will love is impossible. Alluding to the ancient oriental
belief that jewels are formed by the long-continued action of the sun on
common stones, he says:--

For as a stone, so Sufi legends run,
Wooed by unwearied patience of the sun
Piercing its dense opacity, has grown
From a mere pebble to a precious stone,
Its flintiness impermeable and crass
Turned crystalline to let the sunlight pass;
So hearts long years impassive and opaque
Whom terror could not crush nor sorrow break,
Yielding at last to love's refining ray
Transforming and transmuting, day by day,
From dull grown clear, from earthly grown divine,
Flash back to God the light that made them shine.

Jalaluddin did not live to finish the Masnavi, which breaks off abruptly
near the end of the sixth book. He died in 1272, seven years after
Dante's birth. His last charge to his disciples was as follows:--

I bid you fear God openly and in secret, guard against excess in
eating, drinking and speech; keep aloof from evil companionship;
be diligen