The Essence of Islam – Volume II — Page 96
96. Essence of Islam II along which creates every kind of facility for reason and delivers a person from a host of difficulties which confront him on account of the shortness of age, insufficient knowledge and lack of insight. [Brāhīn-e-Aḥmadiyya, Rūḥānī Khazā'in, vol. 1, pp. 292-309, footnote 11]. The Function of Reason. It is true that reason is also a lamp which God has furnished to man, the light of which draws man towards truth and saves him from a variety of doubts and suspicions and sets aside different types of baseless ideas and improper conjectures. It is very useful, very necessary and is a great bounty. Yet, despite all this it suffers from the shortcoming that it alone cannot lead to full certainty in the matter of the understanding of the reality of things. . The stage of perfect certainty is that man should believe that the reality of things exists as it in fact does exist. . Reason alone cannot lead to this high degree of certainty. . At the outside, it proves the need of the existence of something, but does not prove that in fact it exists. This degree of certainty that a person's knowledge should proceed from the stage of 'should be' to the stage of 'is', is acquired only when reason is joined by a companion which, confirming its conjecture, converts it into fact, that is to say, regarding a matter concerning which reason says it 'should be' that companion informs that in fact it 'is'. Reason only establishes the need of a thing; it cannot establish its existence, and these are two distinct and separate matters. Thus, reason needs a companion which should supplement the defective 'should be' of reason with the affirmative 'is' and which should give information of facts as they truly exist. So, God Who is most Compassionate and Generous and desires to lead