Part 5

This dress answered different ends: for in the first place it covered his nakedness, helped to keep him warm, and then it made him so frightful to the beasts that none of them cared to meddle with him or come near him.

After awhile he began to make experiments with the body of the roe, anxious to find out its composition.

He noticed, when he shut his eyes or held anything before him, he could see nothing at all till this obstacle was removed; and so, when he put his fingers in his ears that he could not hear till he took them out again. From which he concluded that all his senses and actions were liable to obstacles and impediments, upon the removal of which the same functions returned to their former course.

Now, when he found no visible defect in the external parts of the body of the roe, and yet at the same time perceived a universal cessation of its motions, he began to imagine that the hurt from which the roe had died was hidden in the inward part of the body.

Now he had observed on the bodies of wild beasts and other animals that all their members were solid, and that there were only three cavities, viz. the skull, the breast, and belly. He imagined, therefore, that the part the nature of which he wanted to find out must be in one of these cavities, and he had a strong persuasion that it was in the middlemost of them.

And having by this way of reasoning assured himself that the disaffected part lay in the breast, he resolved to open the breast of the roe; and, providing himself with sharp flints and splinters of dry cane almost like knives, he made an incision between the ribs, and, cutting through the flesh, came to the Diaphragm.

When he found this tough and not easily broken, he assured himself that such a covering must belong to that part for which he was looking out. After great efforts he succeeded in breaking through, and the first part he met was the lungs; and at last he found the heart, which he saw closed with a very strong cover and fastened with strong ligaments and guarded with a membrane.

On finding the same membrane on the inside of the ribs, and the lungs in the same posture as on the other side which he had opened first, he concluded the heart to be the part he looked for. When, however, he found that the being which had dwelt there before, had left its house before it fell to ruin, and forsaken it, the whole body seemed to him an inconsiderable thing.

Then his mind was perplexed with a variety of thoughts as to its substance and subsistence, the reason of its departure, etc. After much deliberation, at last he found that from that part of the heart which had departed proceeded all those actions by which the roe had shown her care of him and her affection,--that the body was only as an instrument or tool, like his cudgel with which he used to fight with the wild beasts. Thus all his regard for the body was over and transferred to that by which the body is governed, and by whose power it moves. So he decides in the end to bury the body.

After its burial, the impression of his loneliness and of his dependence upon himself being deepened, he quickly develops his faculties. In a short time he becomes an expert in different sports, as hunting and fishing. He makes himself clothes and shoes of the skins of wild beasts. By the observations he made upon the swallows' nests, being taught the art of building, he builds with his hands a room for his own use, a store-house, and a pantry. Then he contrives to make some wild horses so tractable that he can use them for riding, which is a great help to him in his expeditions and excursions.

His material existence thus once firmly established and secured, he begins to indulge in his speculations on all sorts of bodies,--on the different kinds of animals, plants, minerals and different sorts of stones, earth, water, exhalations and vapours, ice, snow, hail, smoke, fire, etc.

By the time he attains to the age of twenty-eight (fourth Septenary), his mind starts to ponder over astronomical problems--over heaven and stars, sun and moon; and in the end comes to the conclusion that the body of heaven is finite and is of a spherical figure.

At last his mind finds itself occupied with the great problem of Creation and Creator. With admirable skill the author delineates here the gradual development of Hayy's reasonings on the Creator and Mover of the world, and concludes with the panegyric words of the Koran: He is the Existence, He is the Absoluteness, He is the Perfection, He is the Beauty, He is the Glory, He is the Power, He is the Knowledge, He is He, and all Things perish beside Him.

All his thoughts were henceforward confined to the contemplation of this necessarily self-existent Being. In order to do this, he removed all his affections from sensible things, shut his eyes, stopped his ears, and refrained himself as much as possible from following his imagination, endeavouring to the utmost to think of nothing besides him.

Whilst so, on the one side, the imagination and all the other faculties which make any use of the organs of the body grew weak; on the other side, the operations of his essence which did not depend upon the body grew strong, so that sometimes his meditation was pure and free from any mixture, and he beheld thereby the necessarily self-existent Being; but then again corporeal faculties would return upon him and spoil his contemplation, and bring him down to the lowest degree.

Thus he continued, he opposing his corporeal faculties, and they opposing him, and mutually struggling one against another. Then, when he observed that the negative attributes consisted in separation from bodily things, he began to strip himself of all bodily properties--to remove and reject all those things from himself, as being in no wise consistent with that state which he was now in search of.

Thus he continued, confining himself to rest in the bottom of his cave, with his head bowed down and his eyes shut, and turning himself altogether from all sensible things and the corporeal faculties, and turning all his thoughts and meditations upon the necessarily self-existent Being without admitting anything else besides him: and if any other object presented itself to his imagination, he rejected it with his utmost force, and persisted therein to that degree that sometimes he did neither eat nor stir for many days together.

When he succeeded in preventing the admission of an extraneous object into that contemplation, he endeavoured as it were to disappear from himself--to detach himself entirely from his corporeal faculties, so as to be wholly taken up in the vision of that true Being.

And, thereto when at last he attained both the heaven and the earth, all spiritual forms and corporeal faculties, and all those powers that are separate from matter, all disappeared and vanished, and were as if they had never been. And amongst these his own being disappeared too, till at last there remained nothing but this One, True, Perpetually Self-existent Being, who spoke thus in that saying of his (the Koran): To whom now belongs the Kingdom? To this One, the Almighty God.

Thus he deeply immersed himself into this state, and witnessed "that which neither eye hath seen, nor ear heard, nor hath it ever entered into the heart of man to conceive."

When he came to himself from that state which was like drunkenness--he began to think that his own essence did not at all differ from the essence of that True Being, and that there was nothing in him but this true essence. It appeared to him that this True, Powerful, and Glorious Being was not by any means capable of multiplicity, and that his knowledge of his essence was his very essence, from whence he argued thus: "He that has the knowledge of this essence, has the essence itself, but I have the knowledge of this essence. Ergo, I have the essence itself."

Now Hayy Ibn Yokdhan being wholly immersed in the speculation of those things, and perfectly abstracted from all other objects, saw in the highest sphere a Being devoid of any maker; it was like the image of the sun which appears in a well-polished looking-glass. In the essence of that separate sphere he saw such perfection, splendour, and beauty, as is too great to be expressed by any tongue and too subtle to be clothed in words. It was, as he perceived it, in the utmost perfections of delight and joy, exaltation of gladness.

The next sphere to it--that of the fixed stars, had an immaterial essence that was not the essence of that True one, nor the essence of that highest, separated sphere, nor the sphere itself, but like the image of the sun that is reflected upon a looking-glass from another glass placed opposite to the sun; and in this essence he observed also the like splendour, beauty, loveliness, and pleasure that he had observed in the essence of the other highest sphere; the same splendour and delight he saw also in other essences. In fact, in all the spheres he observed immaterial distinct essences of the same kind; he saw such beauty, splendour, pleasure, and joy as eye has not seen nor ear heard, until he came to the lower world, subject to generation and corruption, which comprehends all that is contained within the sphere of the moon.

This essence, immaterial like the rest, had seventy thousand faces, and every face seventy thousand mouths, and every mouth seventy thousand tongues, that sanctified and glorified incessantly that One, True Being.

Now, he perceived in his own essence, and in those other ones that were in the same rank with him, infinite beauty, brightness, and light, such as neither eye has seen nor ear heard, nor has it entered into man's heart, which none can describe nor understand, but those which have attained thereto, and know it by experience.

But, on the other hand, he saw a great many other immaterial essences that resembled rusty looking-glasses, covered over with filth, and having their faces marked from those polished looking-glasses that had the image of the sun imprinted upon them. These essences had so much filthiness adhering to them, and such manifold defects, as he could not have conceived. Besides they were afflicted with infinite pains, that caused incessant sighs and groans; they were compassed with torments and "scorched with the fiery veil of separation."

Then, when he came to consider the divine essences and heroic spirits, he found them to be free from body and all its adherents, and removed from them at the utmost distance, having no connection or dependence upon them; their sole connection and dependence being that One True Necessary Self-existent Being who is the beginning and the cause of their existence.

Now, though the sensible world follows the divine world as a shadow does the body, and the divine world stands in no need of it and is independent of it; yet, it is absurd to suppose a possibility of its being annihilated, because it follows the divine world: but the corruption of this world consists in its being changed, not annihilated. And that glorious book (the Koran) spoke, where is no mention made of "moving the Mountains and making them like the world, and men like fire-flies, and darkening the Sun and Moon; and eruption of the Sea in that day when the earth shall be changed into another earth and the heavens likewise."