A literary history of Persia

440 THE SUFI MYSTICISMreveals the Nature and Attributes of itsUnchanging Prototype.This idea is finely expressed in one of the odes of Shams-i-Tabrfz, rendered into English verse by my friend Mr. R. A.Nicholson (pp. cit., p. 343):" Poor copies out of heaven's original,Pale earthly pictures mouldering to decay,What care although your beauties break and fall,When that which gave them life endures for aye ?"It is the essential nature of Beauty to desire to reveal andmanifest itself,which qualityit derives from the EternalBeauty. "/ was a Hidden Treasure" God isCause Crea " described tion. by the Sufis as saying to David, "ana Iwished to be known, so I created creation that I mightbe known." Now a thing can only be known throughitsopposite Light by Darkness, Good by Evil, Health by Sickness,and so on hence ; Being could only reveal itselfThe Nature ofthrough Not Being, and through the product ofthis admixture (touse a not very accurate expression),namely, the Phenomenal World. Thus Eternal Beautymanifests itself, as itwere, by a sort of self-negation ;andwhat we call "Evil" is a necessary consequence of thismanifestation, so that the Mystery of Evil is really identicalwith the Mystery of Creation, and inseparable therefrom.But Evil must not be regarded as a separate and independententity : just as Darkness is the mere negation of Light, soEvil ismerely the Not-Good, or, in other words, the Non-Existent. All Phenomenal Being, on the other hand, necessarilycontains some elements of Good, justas the scatteredrays of the pure, dazzling white light which has passed throughthe prism are still light, their light more or less "coloured"and weakened. It is from this fall from the "World ofColourlessness" (fdlam-i-bl-rangi)that all the strife and conflictapparent in this world result, as it is said in the Mathnawl :