The Second Chapter
of the Twenty-Ninth Flash
(On the phrase: All praise be to God!)
[This short treatise, called the Second Chapter, explains only nine of the countless lights and advantages of belief in God, which make man declare: “All praise be to God!”]
In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate.
First of all, two things will be pointed out:
1. Philosophy is a pair of dark glasses which shows everything to be ugly and frightful. While belief in God is a transparent, clear, luminous pair of spectacles which shows everything to be beautiful and familiar.
2. Man is connected with all creatures, has a sort of commerce with all things, and by nature is compelled to meet, talk, and be neighbourly with the things that blockade him; so too he possesses six aspects: a left, right, upper, lower, front, and back aspect.
On wearing either of these two pairs of spectacles, man can see the creatures and things present in the aspects mentioned above.
Right Aspect: What is meant by this aspect is the past. When it is looked at through the spectacles of philosophy, what is seen is a vast, dark, terrifying, overturned graveyard, where the doomsday of the land of the past has come to pass. There can be no doubt that this sight casts man into great terror, fear, and despair.