A Present to Kings — Page 16
( 16 ). The fact is patent that man, as a rule, has a natural predilection for animal propensities and the reason is that those propensities have in them the property of quick satisfaction. . It is due to this that man devotes so much of his time to the pursuit of physical comforts, and there are many who spend their whole lives in search of pleasures of diet, drink and dress. Their toil and endeavour of night and day are meant merely to satisfy their animal passions, and as the satisfaction of these depends largely upon the acquisition of material wealth and property, these men devote their entire attention to the world. And the further they are from truth and the more larren they are of the knowledge of God, the more are they absorbed in and engrossed with the acquisition of material wealth, because in the acquisition of these lie the means of satisfaction of their animal passions, which most of the time work so powerfully in men. . Thus, a work which goes on spontaneously among mankind and which religion being discarded, becomes the only object. of humn life, to think with reference to such a work that it is the object to which Islam calls attention is to pronounce. Islam a fatuity, because the work was already being performed before Islam came into existence and is the better performed when men cease to have any thing to do with Islam. For example, there are nations which are without any religion, the single object of whose existence is to acquire wealth and to satisfy their passions, and who find the joy of their heart to lie in eating, drinking and dressing and in a life of comfort. The acquisition of material prosperity and the satisfaction of animal passions and lower desires can not then be the objective of. Islam, because the work goes on even without Islam and does not require the advent of a propliet for its accomplishment, human nature itself being for it a sufficient incentive. . Thus, if at the present time the Mussalmans under the protection of some just and fair minded governent have, in imitation of the material prosperity of Europe, made an advance in commerce or shown an aptitude for modern learnings, such progress, however perfect it may be, can not be called the