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."