But it is not possible to be totally exempt from sensuous passions, for if the body should be deprived of food and drink for example, it would perish. There is occasion therefore for making distinctions between our acts; but these distinctions, the individual is not capable of making for himself, because the animal soul necessarily casts a veil over the truth and inclines it to vanity. On this account we are obliged to follow after and imitate others—such persons as the prophets. They have been purified and enlightened by the eternal Truth Himself, and have been sent forth to communicate precepts and laws, and to decide upon all circumstances. Every one is therefore bound to imitate them within the limits of the law, and in the regulation of his moral conduct, that he may attain felicity and be preserved from danger of eternal destruction. Those careless and indifferent persons, seeker after the divine mysteries, who from ignorance, stupidity and sin have turned away from God and his prophet, and have wandered from the path of religion, may be arranged in seven classes.
To the first class belong those who do not believe in God. They had desired to find him out in his essence and attributes, by speculations and fancies, by comparisons and illustrations. And because they have not succeeded in understanding him, they have referred his acts and his government to the stars and to nature. They have fancied that the soul of man and of other animals, and this wonderful world with its marvellous arrangements came of themselves, and that they are eternal; or that they are effects from natural causes, and that there is no creator beyond the sphere of the world. This class of people resembles the man who seeing a writing, fancies that it was written of itself, and infers that it was not written by a penman or by a supernatural power: or else that it is eternal and that no one knows whence it comes. It is impossible to recover from
