Ahmadiyyat or The True Islam — Page 199
199 good, and that he should forgive those who trespass against him, except in cases when forgiveness would promote disorder and strife. This stage is higher than that of ‘Adal and a man cannot attain to it unless he has first habituated himself to the first stage, otherwise it will only be a superficial transformation, liable to be reversed in a moment of aberration. The third stage of virtue is described as I t a ’i dhil qurb a , that is to say, a man should do good to others neither in return for any good done to him nor in the hope of receiving good in return, as for instance, parents do good to their children, or brothers do good to broth- ers, under a natural impulse. Parents do not love or look after their children in the hope of receiving benefits from them in return. Even in the case of parents who are too old to expect that they would be alive by the time the child grows up, there is the same fondness and love for the child as in the case of parents who are still in their youth. This love of parents for their children, as I have said, is not prompted by any hope of gain; it is an instinct. Parents never imagine that they are laying their children under any sort of obligation by loving them and looking after them. They only fulfil a natural yearning and the hope of a material return or the thought that they are laying the child under an obligation never even enters their minds. This feeling, therefore, which parents or near relatives entertain for their children or relatives is much nobler than I h s a n or beneficence. In benefi- cence there is a certain feeling of self-complacence, a feeling that one is doing a good act, whereas in the love of parents or relatives for children and relatives, there is