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THE KEY OF KNOWLEDGE.
and 'whatsoever Adam called any living creature, that was the name thereof."*
The Qur'an, thus, rightly propounds the nature of the soul : it is the expression of thought, or knowledge, of the Essence of Life personified as God. Where the followers of Islam go wrong is in respect of the origin which they ascribe to it.
For even from a purely speculative point of view, which mostly constitutes the logic of modern theology, the eternity of souls can be easily proved. That the soul is the uttered word of God, is the proposition agreed upon. Now, the question is: did God utter the word ' haphazard, or intelligently? If the former, God is not all-wise, but a thoughtless, chaotic being, who has neither control nor understanding of his speech, but who raves like one in delirium tremens-in short, a thoughtless monstrosity. If the latter, the sense of the word must be known to him prior to its utterance. Further reflection will show that the 'sense,' i.e., the idea, must be eternal. For, if it is not eternal, it must come into existence in time, in which case it will have both a beginning and an end. Hence arises the question : did God know the particular idea before it came into existence, or not? If he did not, his knowledge was not perfect, since he was ignorant in respect of that particular idea ; and, as all ideas, on the hypothesis of theology, must be said to have had an origin, there must have been a time when God had absolutely no idea in his mind, that is to say, when he was totally ignorant. But this contradicts the wisdom attribute of
* Genesis, 11. 19.
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