Barahin-e-Ahmadiyya Part IV — Page 163
Footnote Number Eleven 163 is that it proves the need of this instrument, but it cannot serve itself as that instrument. For instance, reason proves the need for a millstone for grinding grain into flour, but it is not the case that reason itself becomes the millstone and starts grinding grain into flour. Likewise the intellect has led to establish the need for hundreds of instruments. However, only that work is accomplished that is done with the help of an instrument, and where the instrument is not available, the reason remains confounded. Look at the entire enterprise of the world and you will realize that the utmost that intellect can do is to suggest some instrument to the human mind for performing a task. For instance, when reason thought of an instrument needed to cross the river, the idea of a boat came to mind; then a suitable material that does not sink into water, but floats on it, became available for building the boat. And thus the boat was built with this material. By the same measure, there are thousands of instruments that are required for running the affairs of the world. In all cases the function of the intellect is only to prove the need of an instru- ment and suggest the kind of instrument needed, but it cannot do the work of the required instrument. Thus it should be understood that sane reason determines it as being plainly evident that to have unequivocal knowledge of the events of the Hereafter, the existence of the Creator of the worlds, His pleasure and displeasure, the quality and quantity of reward and punishment, and attaining definite information about the soul’s immortality and eternal existence, is such a fine and subtle matter that it cannot be truly and cer- tainly known without a heavenly instrument. As reason has proven the need for thousands of instruments to properly manage worldly affairs, so has sane reason proven the need for a heavenly instrument to know the unseen world with certainty, so that the Omnipotent’s Being— whom hundreds of thousands of the wise have erred in recognizing— may be known with conviction and certainty; and the realm of reward and punishment may also be known with certainty so that a seeker after truth should advance beyond conjecture and, in this very world, see