Alhassanain(p) Network for Heritage and Islamic Thought

NOTES AND REFERENCES

Lecture I: Knowledge and Religious Experience

1. Reference here is to the following verse from the mystical allegorical work:ManÇiq al-ñair (p. 243, v. 5), generally considered the magnum opus, of one of the greatest sufi poets and thinkers Farâd al-Dân ‘AÇÇ«r’ (d.c. 618/1220):

2. A. N. Whitehead, Religion in the Making, p. 5.

3. Ibid., p. 73.

4. Cf. H. L. Bergson, Creative Evolution, pp. 187-88; on this intuition-intellect relation see also Allama Iqbal’s essay:Bedil in the light of Bergson , ed. Dr Tehsin Firaqi, pp. 22-23.

5.Allahumm«arin« haq«’iq al-ashy«kam«hâya , a tradition, in one form or other, to be found in well-known Sufistic works, for example, ‘Alâb. ‘Uthm«n al-Hujwayrâ,Kashf al-MaÁjëb , p. 166; Mawl«n« Jal«l al-Dân Rëmâ,Mathnawâ-i Ma’nawâ , ii, 466-67; iv, 3567-68; v, 1765; MaÁmëd Shabistarâ (d. 720/1320),Gulshan-i R«z , verse 200, and ‘Abd al-RaÁm«n J«mâ (d. 898/1492),Law«’ih , p. 3.

6. Qur’an, 16:68-69.

7. Ibid., 2:164; 24:43-44; 30:48; 35:9; 45:5.

8. Ibid., 15:16; 25:6; 37:6; 41:12; 50:6; 67:5; 85:1.

9. Ibid., 21:33; 36:40.

10. Cf. F. M. Cornford:Plato’s Theory of Knowledge , pp. 29;109; also Bertrand Russell:History of Western Philosophy , chapter: ‘Knowledge and Perception in Plato’.

11. Qur’an, 16:78; 23:78; 32:9; 67:23.

12. Ibid., 17:36. References here, as also at other places in theLectures , to a dozen Quranic verses in two sentences bespeak of what is uppermost in Allama Iqbal’s mind, i.e. Quranic empiricism which by its very nature gives rise to aWeltanschauung of the highest religious order. He tells us, for example, that the general empirical attitude of the Qur’a`n engenders a feeling of reverence for the actual and that one way of entering into relation with Reality is through reflective observation and control of its perceptually revealed symbols (cf. below, pp. 11-12, italics mine; also Lecture V, p. 102, not 9).

13. For anti-classicism of the Qur’an cf. Mazheruddân Âiddiqâ,Concept of Muslim Culture in Iqbal , pp. 13-25; also Lecture V, note 21.

14. See R. A. Tsanoff,The Problem of Immortality (a work listed at S. No. 37 in theDescriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library ), pp. 75-77; cf. also B. H. Zedler, ‘Averroes and Immortality’,New Scholasticism (1954), pp. 436-53. It is to be noted that Tsanoff marshals the views of S. Munk (Mé langes de philosophie , pp. 454 ff.), E. Renan (Averroes et I’averroisme , pp. 152, 158), A Stockl (Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters , 11, 117, 119), de Boer (Geschichte der Philosophie , p. 173) and M. Horten (Die Hauptlehren des Averroes , pp. 244 ff.) as against those of Carra de Vaux as presented by him in his work Avicenne, pp. 233 ff., as well as in the article: ‘Averroes’ inEncyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , II, 264-65, and clinches the matter thus: ‘certainly - and this is more significant for our purpose - it was as a denier of personal immortality that scholasticism received and criticised Averroes’ (p. 77, II, 16-19). For a recent and more balanced view of ‘Ibn Rushd’s doctrine of immortality, cf. Roger Arnaldez and A. Z. Iskander, ‘Ibn Rushd’,Dictionary of Scientific Biography , XII, 7a-7b. It is to be noted, however, that M. E. Marmura in his article on ‘Soul: Islamic Concepts’ inThe Encyclopedia of Religion , XIII, 465 clearly avers that Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle leave no room for a doctrine of individual immortality.

15. Cf. Tsanoff, op. cit., pp. 77-84, and M. Yënus Farangi Mahallâ,Ibn Rushd (Urdu; partly based on Renan’sAverroes et l’averroisme ), pp. 347-59.

16. See Lecture IV, pp. 93-98, and Lecture VII, pp. 156-57.

17. Reference is to the expression lawÁ-in mahfëzin used in the Quranic verse 85:22. For the interpretation this unique expression of the Qur’an see M. Asad,The Message of the Qur’an , p. 943, note; and Fazlur Rahman, Major Themes of the Qur’a`n, p. 98 - the latter seems to come quite close to Allama Iqbal’s generally very keen perception of the meanings of the Qur’an.

18. This comes quite close to the contemporary French philosopher Louis Rougier’s statement in hisPhilosophy and the New Physics p. 146, II, 17-21. This work, listed at S. No. 15 in theDescriptive Catalogue of Allama Iqbal’s Personal Library , is cited in Lecture III, p. 59.

19. Reference here is to Tevfâk Fikret, pseudonym of Mehmed Tevfik, also known as Tevfik Nazmâ, and not to Tawfik Fitrat as it got printed in the previous editions of the present work. Fikret, widely considered the founder of the modern school of Turkish poetry and remembered among other works for his collection of poems: Rub«b-i Shikeste (‘The Broken Lute’), died in Istanbul on 18 August 1915 at the age of forty-eight. For an account of Fikret’s literary career and his anti-religious views, cf. Niyazi Berkes,The Development of Secularism in Turkey , pp. 300-02 and 338-39; also Haydar Ali Dirioz’s brief paper in Turkish on Fikret’s birth-centenary translated by Dr M. H. Notqi inJournal of the Regional Cultural Institute , 1/4 (Autumn 1968), 12-15.

It is for Turkish-Persian scholars to determine the extent to which Fikret made use of the great poet-thinker Bedil (d. 1133/1721) for ‘the anti-religious and especially anti-Islamic propaganda in Central Asia’. Among very many works on both Bedil and Fikret that have appeared since Allama’s days and are likely to receive the scholars’ attention, mention must be made of Allama’s own short perceptive study: ‘Bedil in the Light of Bergson’, and unpublished essay in Allama’s hand (20 folios) preserved in the Allama Iqbal Museum (Lahore); cf. Dr Ahmad Nabi Khan,Relics of Allama Iqbal (Catalogue) , 1, 25, with photographic reproduction of the first sheet.

20. Cf. John Oxenford (tr.), Conversations of Goethe with Eckermann and Sorret , p. 41.

21. The Qur’an condemns monkery; see 57:27; 2:201; and 28:77. Cf. alsoSpeeches, Writings and Statements of Iqbal , ed. A. L. Sherwani, p. 7, for Allama Iqbal’s observations on the respective attitudes of Christianity and Islam towards the problems of life, leading to his keenly profound pronouncement: ‘The religious ideal of Islam, therefore, is organically related to the social order which it has created’.

22. There are many verses of the Qur’an wherein it has been maintained that the universe has not been created in sport (l«’ibân ) or in vain (b«Çil-an ) but for a serious end or with truth (bi’l-Áhaqq ). These are respectively: (a) 21:16; 44:38; (b) 3:191; 38:27; (c) 6:73; 10:5; 14:19; 15:85; 16:3; 29:44; 30:8; 39:5; 44:39; 45:22; 46:3; and 64:3.

23. See also the Quranic verse 51:47 wherein the phrase inna la-mu`si’u`n has been interpreted to clearly foreshadow the modern notion of the ‘expanding universe’ (cf. M. Asad,The Message of the Qur’a`n , p. 805, note 31).

24. Reference here is in particular to the Prophetic tradition worded as:l«tasubbëal-dahra fa inn All«h huwa’l-dahru , (AÁmad Àanbal,Musnad , V, 299 and 311). Cf. also Bukh«râ,Tafsâr : 45;TauÁâd : 35;Adab `: 101; andMuslim , Alf«z 2-4; for other variants of theÁadâth SaÁâfa Hamm«m-Bin-Munabbih (ed. Dr. M. Hamidullah)Áadâth 117, gives one of its earliest recorded texts.

In an exceedingly important section captionedAl-Waqtu Saif-un (Time is Sword) of his celebratedAsr«r-i-Khudâ , Allama Iqbal has referred to the above hadit`h thus:

Life is of Time and Time is of Life;

Do not abuse Time!’ was the command of the Prophet. (trans. Nicholson)

25. Reference is to the Quranic verse 70:19 which says: ‘Man has been created restless (halë’an ).’

26. This is very close to the language of the Qur’an which speaks of the hardening of the hearts, so that they were like rocks: see 2:74; 5:13; 6:43; 39:22; and 57:16.

This shows that Allama Iqbal, through his keenly perceptive study of the Qur’an, had psychically assimilated both its meanings and its diction so much so that many of his visions, very largely found in his poetical works, may be said to be born of this rare assimilation; cf. Dr Ghul«m Mustaf« Kh«n’s voluminousIqb«l aur Qur’an (in Urdu).

27. Qur’an, 41:35; also 51:20-21.

28. Reference here is to theMathnawâ , ii, 52:

The bodily sense is eating the food of darkness

The spiritual sense is feeding from a sun (trans. Nicholson).

29. Qur’an, 53:11-12.

30. Ibid., 22:46.

31. Cf.Bukh«râ , Jan«’iz, 79; Shah«dah 3; Jih«d: 160, 178; andMuslim , Fitan: 95-96. D. J. Halperin’s article: ‘The Ibn Âayy«d Traditions and the Legend of al-Dajj«l’,Journal of the American Oriental Society , XCII/ii (1976), 213-25, gives an atomistic analytic account of the ah«dâth listed by him.

32. In Arabic:lau tarakathu bayyana , an invariable part of the text of a number ofah«dâth about Ibn Âayy«d; cf. D. B. Macdonald,The Religious Attitude and Life in Islam , pp. 35 ff.; this book, which represents Macdonald’s reputed Haskell Lectures on Comparative Religion at Chicago University in 1906, seems to have received Allama’s close attention in the present discussion.

33.Ibid ., p. 36.

34. Cf. Lecture V, pp. 100 ff.

35. The term ‘subliminal self’ was coined by F. W. H. Myers in the 1890’s which soon became popular in ‘religious psychology’ to designate what was believed to be the larger portion of the self lying beyond the level of consciousness, yet constantly influencing thought and behaviour as in parapsychic phenomena. With William James the concept of subliminal self came to stand for the area of human experience in which contact with the Divine Life may occur (cf.The Varieties of Religious Experience , pp. 511-15).

36. Macdonald,op. cit ., p. 42.

37. Cf. MuÁyuddân Ibn al-‘Arabâ’s observation that ‘God is a precept, the world is a concept’, referred to in Lecture VII, p. 144, note 4.

38.Ibid ., p. 145, where it is observed: ‘Indeed the incommunicability of religious experience gives us a clue to the ultimate nature of the human ego’.

39. W. E. Hocking,The Meaning of God in Human Experience , p. 66. It is important to note here that according to Richard C. Gilman this concept of the inextricable union of idea and feeling is the source of strong strain of mysticism is Hocking’s philosophy, but it is a mysticism which does not abandon the role of intellect in clarifying and correcting intuition; cf. his article: ‘Hocking, William Ernest’,Encyclopedia of Philosophy , IV, 47 (italics mine).

40. Reference here perhaps is to the hot and long-drawn controversy between the Mu‘tazilites (early Muslim rationalists) and the Ash’arties (the orthodox scholastics) on the issue of Khalq al-Qur’an, i.e. the createdness or the eternity of the Qur’an; for which see Lecture VI, note 9. The context of the passage, however, strongly suggests that Allama Iqbal means to refer here to the common orthodox belief that the text of the Qur’an is verbally revealed, i.e. the ‘word’ is as much revealed as the ‘meaning’. This has perhaps never been controverted and rarely if ever discussed in the history of Muslim theology - one notable instance of its discussion is that by Sh«h Walâ All«h in Sata’«t andFuyëz al-Àaramain . Nevertheless, it is significant to note that there is some analogical empirical evidence in Allama’s personal life in support of the orthodox belief in verbal revelation. Once asked by Professor Lucas, Principal of a local college, in a private discourse, whether, despite his vast learning, he too subscribed to belief in verbal revelation, Allama immediately replied that it was not a matter of belief with him but a veritable personal experience for it was thus, he added, he composed his poems under the spells of poetic inspiration - surely, Prophetic revelations are far more exalted. Cf. ‘Abdul Majâd S«lik,Dhikr-i Iqb«l , pp. 244-45 and Faqir Sayyid WaÁâd-ud-Dân,Rëzg«r-i Faqâr , pp. 38-39. After Allama’s epoch-makingmathnawi :Asr«r-i Khudâ was published in 1915 and it had given rise to some bitter controversy because of his critique of ‘ajami tasawwuf , and of the great À«fiz, he in a letter dated 14 April 1916 addressed to Mah«r«ja Kishen Parsh«d confided strictly in a personal way: ‘I did not compose the mathnawâ myself; I was made to (guided to), to do so’; cf. M. ‘Abdull«h Quraishâ’Naw«dir-i Iqb«l (Ghair MaÇbu’ah Khutët )’,Sahâfah , Lahore, ‘Iqb«l Nambar’ (October 1973), Letter No. 41, p. 168.

41. Cf. William James, op. cit., p. 15.

42.Ibid ., p. 21.

43. The designation ‘apostle’ (rasël ) is applied to bearers of divine revelations which embody a new doctrinal system or dispensation; a ‘prophet’ (nabâ ), on the other hand, is said to be one whom God has entrusted with enunciation of ethical principles on the basis of an already existing dispensation, or of principles common to all dispensations. Hence, every apostle is a prophet as well, but every prophet is not an apostle.

44. Cf. Lecture VII, pp. 143-144, where this point is reiterated.

45. E. W. Hocking,op. cit ., pp.106-107.

Lecture II: THE PHILOSOPHICAL TEST OF THE REVELATIONS OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE

1. Cf. E.S. Haldane and G.R.T. Ross (trs.),The Philosophical Works of Descartes , II, 57.

2. Cf.The Critique of Pure Reason , trans. N.’Kemp Smith, p. 505.

3. The logical fallacy of assuming in the premisses of that which is to be proved in the conclusion.

4. Qur’an, 41:53, also 51:20-21.

5.Ibid ., 57:3.

6. Cf. R.F.A. Hoernle,Matter, Life, Mind and God , pp. 69-70.

7. Cf. H. Barker, article ‘Berkeley’ inEncyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , especially the section; ‘Metaphysics of Immaterialism’; see also Lecture IV, p. 83, for Allama Iqbal’s acute observations in refutation of ‘the hypothesis of matter as an independent existence’.

8. Cf. A.N. Whitehead,The Concept of Nature , p. 30. This is what Whitehead has called the ‘theory of bifurcation of Nature’ based on the dichotomy of ‘simply located material bodies of Newtonian physics’ and the ‘pure sensations’ of Hume. According to this theory, Nature is split up into two disparate or isolated parts; the one known to us through our immediate experiences of colours, sounds, scents, etc., and the other, the world of unperceived scientific entities of molecules, atoms, electrons, ether, etc. - colourless, soundless, unscented - which so act upon the mind through ‘impact’ as to produce in it the ‘illusions’ of sensory experiences in which it delights. The theory thus divides totality of being into a reality which does not appear and is thus a mere ‘conjecture’ and appearances which are not real and so are mere ‘dream’. Whitehead outright rejects ‘bifurcation’; and insists that the red glow of sunset is as much ‘part of Nature’ as the vibrations of molecules and that the scientist cannot dismiss the red glow as a ‘psychic addition’ if he is to have a coherent ‘Concept of Nature’. This view of Whitehead, the eminent mathematician, expounded by him in 1920 (i.e. four years before his appointment to the chair of Philosophy at Harvard at the age of sixty-three) was widely accepted by the philosophers. Lord Richard Burdon Haldane, one of the leading neo-Hegelian British philosophers, said to be the first philosophical writer on the Theory of Relativity, gave full support to Whitehead’s views on ‘bifurcation’ as well as on ‘Relativity’ in his widely-readReign of Relativity to which Allama Iqbal refers in Lecture III, p. 57, and tacitly also perhaps in lecture V. The way Lord Haldane has stated in this work his defence of Whitehead’s views of Relativity (enunciated by him especially in Concept of Nature) even as against those of Einstein, one is inclined to surmise that it was perhaps Reign of Relativity (incidentally also listed at S. No. 276 in theDescriptive Catalogue of Allama’s Personal Library ) more than any other work that led Allama Iqbal to make the observation: ‘Whitehead’s view of Relativity is likely to appeal to Muslim students more than that of Einstein in whose theory time loses its character of passage and mysteriously translates itself into utter space’ (Lecture V, p. 106).

9. Allama Iqbal states here Zeno’s first and third arguments; for all the four arguments of Zeno on the unreality of motion, see John Burnet,Greek philosophy; Thales to Plato , p. 84; they generally go by names; the ‘dichotomy’; the ‘Achilles’; the ‘arrow’; and the ‘stadium’. It may be added that our primary source for Zeno’s famous and controversial arguments is Aristotle Physics (VI, 9, 239b) which is generally said to have been first translated into Arabic by IsÁ«q b. Àunain (c. 845-910/911), the son of the celebrated Àunain b. IsÁ«q. Aristotle’s Physics is also said to have been commented on later by the Christian Abë’Alâal-Àasan b. al-Samh (c. 945-1027); cf. S.M. Stern, ‘Ibn-al-Samh’,Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1956), pp. 31-44. Even so it seems that Zeno’s arguments as stated by Aristotle were known to the Muslim thinkers much earlier, maybe through Christian-Syriac sources, for one finds the brilliant Mu‘tazilite Naïï«m (d. 231/845) meeting Zeno’s first argument in terms of his ingenious idea of tafrah jump referred to by Allama Iqbal in Lecture III, pp. 63-64.

10. Cf. T.J. de Boer, article ‘Atomic Theory (Muhammadan)’, inEncyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , II, 202-203; D.B. Macdonald,Development of Muslim Theology , pp. 201 ff. and Majid Fakhry,Islamic Occasionalism , pp. 33-43.

11. Cf.Kit«b al-FiÄal , V, 92-102.

12. For Bergson’s criticism of Zeno’s arguments cf.Creative Evolution , pp. 325-30, and also the earlier work Time and Free Will, pp.113-15.

13. Cf. A.E. Taylor, article ‘Continuity’ inEncyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , IV, 97-98.

14. Cf. Bertrand Russell,Our Knowledge of the External World , pp. 169-88;

also Mysticism and Logic, pp. 84-91.

15. This is not Russell’s own statement but that of H. Wildon Carr made during the course of his exposition of Russell’s views on the subject; see Wildon Carr,The General Principle of Relativity , p. 36.

16. Views of H. Wildon Carr and especially of Sir T. Percy Nunn on relativity in the present context are to be found in their symposium papers on ‘The Idealistic Interpretation of Einstein’s Theory’ published in theProceedings of the Aristotelian Society , N.S. XXII (1921-22), 123-27 and 127-30. Wildon Carr’s,Doctrine of Monadistic Idealism , however, is to be found much more fully expounded in hisGeneral Principle of Relativity (1920) andA Theory of Monads: Outlines of the Philosophy of the Principle of Relativity (1922); passages from both of these books have been quoted in the present lecture (cf. notes 15 and 22).

T. Percy Nunn, best known as an educationist, wrote little philosophy; but whatever little he wrote, it made him quite influential with the leading contemporary British philosophers: Whitehead, Samuel Alexander, Russell, Broad, and others. He is said to have first formulated the characteristic doctrines of neo-Realism, an important philosophical school of the century which had its zealot and able champions both in England and in the United States. His famous symposium paper: ‘Are Secondary Qualities Independent of Perception?’ read in a meeting of the Aristotelian Society in 1909 was widely studied and discussed and as J. Passmore puts it: ‘it struck Bertrand Russell’s roving fancy’ (A Hundred Years of Philosophy , p. 258). It is significant to note that Nunn’s correction put on Wildon Carr’s idealistic interpretation of relativity in the present passage is to be found almost in the same philosophical diction in Russell’s valuable article: ‘Relativity; Philosophical Consequences’, inEncyclopaedia Britannica (1953), XIX, 99d, Russell says: ‘It is a mistake to suppose that relativity adopts any idealistic picture of the world . . The ‘observer’ who is often mentioned in expositions of relativity need not be a mind, but may be a photographic plate or any kind of recording instrument.’

17. On this rather debatable interpretation of Einstein’s theory of relativity see Dr M. Razi-ud-dân Âiddâqâ, ‘Iqbal’s Conception of Time and Space’ inIqbal As A Thinker , pp. 29-31, and Philipp Frank, ‘Philosophical Interpretations and Misinterpretations of the Theory of Relativity’, in H. Feigel and Mary Broadbeck (eds.),Readings in the Philosophy of Science , pp. 222-26, reprinted from his valuable work.Interpretations and Misinterpretations of Modern Physics (1938).

18. Cf. Hans Reichenbach, ‘The Philosophical Significance of the Theory of Relativity’, in P.A. Schilpp (ed.),Albert-Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist , section iv.

19. Cf.Tertium Organum , pp. 33f.

20. Compare this with Bergson’s view of consciousness in Creative Evolution, pp. 189f.

21. This is a passage from J.S. Haldane’s Symposium Paper: ‘Are Physical, Biological and Psychological Categories Irreducible?’ read in July 1918 at the joint session of the Aristotelian Society, the British Psychological Society and the Mind Association; seeProceedings of the Aristotelian Society , XVII, (1917-1918), 423-24, reproduced in H. Wildon Carr (ed.),Life and Finite Individuality , pp. 15-16.

22. A Theory of Monads, pp. 5-6.

23. Cf. Lecture I, pp. 8-11.

24. Cf. the Quranic verses quoted on p. 39; to these may be added 22:47, 32:5, and 70:4 - according to this last verse a day is of the measure of fifty thousand years.

25. Creative Evolution, p. 1.

26. The Qur’an says: ‘And behold a day with thy sustainer is as a thousand years of your reckoning’ (22:47). So also, according to the Old Testament: ‘One day is with the Lord as a thousand years’ (Psalms, xc.’4).

27. According to Bergson, this period may be as long as 25,000 years; cf.Matter and Memory , pp. 272-73.

28. For further elucidation of future as an open possibility’ cf. Lecture III, p.’63.

29. See among others the Quranic verses 25:2; 54:49 and the earliest on this subject in the chronological order of thesërahs : 87:2-3.

These last two short verses speak of four Divine ways governing all creation and so also man, viz. God’s creating a thing (khalaqa ), making it complete (fa sawwa ), assigning a destiny to it or determining its nature (qaddara ) and guiding it to its fulfilment (fa hada ).

Allama Iqbal’s conception of destiny (taqdâr ) as ‘the inward reach of a thing, its realizable possibilities which lie within the depth of its nature, and serially actualize themselves without any feeling of external compulsion’ [italics mine] understood in terms of the Divine ways embodied in the above two short verses, seems to be singularly close to the text and the unique thought-forms of the Qur’an. There is no place in this conception of destiny for the doctrine of Fatalism as preached by some Muslim scholastic theologians whose interpretation of the verses of the Qur’an for this purpose is more often a palpable misinterpretation (Lecture IV, p. 89); nor for the doctrine of determinism as expounded by the philosophers who, cut off from the inner life-impulse given by Islam, think of all things in terms of the inexorable law of cause and effect which governs the human ego as much as the ‘environment’ in which it is placed. They fail to realize that the origin of the law of ‘cause and effect’ lies in the depths of the transcendental ego which has devised it or caused it under divine guidance to realize its divinely assigned destiny of understanding and mastering all things (p. 86); alsoAsr«r-i Khudâ , many verses especially those in the earlier sections.

30. Qur’an, 55:29.

31. Cf. Lecture I, p. 5.

32. See Shiblâ Nu‘m«nâ, Shi‘r al-‘Ajam, II, 114.

33. This is a reference to pp. 33-36.

34. Cf. Lecture I, p. 8 and note 23.

35. The Quranic verse 25:62 quoted on p. 37.

36. Reference is to the Quranic expression:Ghanâyy-un ‘ani’i-’«lamân found in verses 3:97 and 29:6.

37. This is a reference to the Quranic verse 20:14: ‘Verily, I - I alone - am God; there is no deity save Me. Hence, worship Me alone, and be constant in prayer, so as to remember Me.’

38. Qur’an, 42:11.

39. The reference is to the Quranic expression sunnat Allah found in 33:62; 35:43; 40:84-85; 48:23, etc.

40. Cf. Lecture III, p. 83, where Allama Iqbal observes: ‘The scientific observer of Nature is a kind of mystic seeker in the act of prayer.’

41. McTaggart’s argument referred to here was advanced by him in his article; ‘The Unreality of Time’ inMind (N.S.), XVII/68 (October 1908), 457-74, reproduced later inNature of Existence , II, 9-31, as well as in the posthumousPhilosophical Studies , pp. 110-31. McTaggart has been called ‘an outstanding giant in the discussion of the reality or unreality of time’ and his aforesaid article has been most discussed in recent philosophical literature on Time. Of articles in defence of McTaggart’s position, mention may be made of Michael Dummett: ‘A Defence of McTaggart’s Proof of the Unreality of Time’ inPhilosophical Review , XIX (1960), 497-504. But he was criticised by C.D. Borad, the greatest expositor of his philosophy (cf. his commentary:Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy , Vol. I, 1933, and Vol. II in two parts, 1938), inScientific Thought , to which Allama Iqbal has referred in the present discussion, as well as in his valuable article: ‘Time’ inEncyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics , XII, 339a; and earlier than Broad by Reyburn in his article ‘Idealism and the Reality of Time’ inMind (Oct.1913), pp. 493-508 which has been briefly summarized by J. Alexander Gunn inProblem of Time: A Historical and Critical Study , pp. 345-47.

42. Cf. C.D. Broad,Scientific Thought , p. 79.

43. This is much like Broad’s admitting at the conclusion of his examination of McTaggart’s argument that time ‘is the hardest knot in the whole of Philosophy’, ibid., p. 84.

44.The Confessions of St. Augustine , xi, 17; cf. O. Spengler,The Decline of the West , I, 140, where Augustine’s observation is quoted in connection with ‘destiny’.

45. Reference is to the Quranic verse 23:80 quoted on p. 37 above.

46. Cf. M. Afdal Sarkhwush, Kalim«t al-Shu‘ar«‘, p. 77, where this verse is given as under:

47. Cf.Kit«b al-FiÄal , II,158; also 1. Goldziher,The Z«hirâs , pp. 113 f.

48. Qur’«Än, 50:38.

49. Ibid., 2:255.

50. Goethe,Alterswerke (Hamburg edition), I, 367, quoted by Spengler,op. cit ., on fly-leaf with translation on p. 140. For locating this passage in Goethe’sAlterswerke , I am greatly indebted to Professor Dr Annemarie Schimmel.

51. Reference here is to the Prophet’s last words: ‘al-sal«tu al-sal«tu wa m«malakat aim«nukum ’ (meaning: be mindful of your prayers and be kind to persons subject to your authority) reported through three different chains of transmitters in AÁmad b. Àanbal’sMusnad : VI, 290, 311 and 321.