Free The Book of Khalid by Ameen Rihani Page A

peddling? Have I not misrepresented my gewgaws as the atheist misrepresents the truth? ‘This is made in the Holy Land,’—‘This is from the Holy Sepulchre’—these lies, O Khalid, are upon you. And what is the difference between the jewellery you passed off for gold and the arguments of the atheist-preacher? Are they not both instruments of deception, both designed to catch the dollar? Yes, you have been, O Khalid, as mean, as mercenary, as dishonest as those canting infidels.
    “And what are you going to do about it? Will you continue, while in the quagmires yourself, to point contemptuously at those standing in the gutter? Will you, in your dishonesty, dare impeach the honesty of men? Are you not going to make a resolution now, either to keep silent or to go out of the quagmires and rise to the mountain-heights? Be pure yourself first, O Khalid; then try to spread this purity around you at any cost.
    “Yes; that is why, when Shakib asked me to go out peddling one day, I hesitated and finally refused. For atheism, in whose false dry light I walked a parasang or two, did not only betray itself to me as a sham, but also turned my mind and soul to the sham I had shouldered for years. From the peddling-box, therefore, I turned even as I did from atheism. Praised be Allah, who, in his providential care, seemed to kick me away from the door of its temple. The sham,although effulgent and alluring, was as brief as a summer afternoon.”
    As for the peddling-box, our Scribe will tell of its fate in the following Chapter.

CHAPTER VII
IN THE TWILIGHT OF AN IDEA
    IT IS VOLTAIRE, WE BELIEVE, WHO SAYS SOMETHING to the effect that one’s mind should be in accordance with one’s years. That is why an academic education nowadays often fails of its purpose. For whether one’s mind runs ahead of one’s years, or one’s years ahead of one’s mind, the result is much the same; it always goes ill with the mind. True, knowledge is power; but in order to feel at home with it, we must be constitutionally qualified. And if we are not, it is likely to give the soul such a wrenching as to deform it forever. Indeed, how many of us go through life with a fatal spiritual or intellectual twist which could have been avoided in our youth, were we a little less wise. The young
philosophes
, the products of the University Machine of to-day, who go about with a nosegay of -isms, as it were, in their lapels, and perfume their speech with the bottled logic of the College Professor,—are not most of them incapable of honestly and bravely grappling with the real problems of life? And does not a systematic education mean this, that a young man must go through life dragging behind him his heavy chains of set ideas and stock systems, political, social, or religious? (Remember, we are translating from the Khedivial Library MS.) The author continues:
    “Whether one devour the knowledge of the world in four years or four nights, the process of assimilation is equally hindered, if the mind is sealed at the start with the seal of authority. Ay, we can not be too careful of dogmatic science in our youth; for dogmas often dam certain channels of the soul through which we might have reached greater treasures and ascended to purer heights. A young man, therefore, ought to be let alone. There is an infinite possibility of soul-power in every one of us, if it can be developed freely, spontaneously, without discipline or restraint. There is, too, an infinite possibility of beauty in every soul, if it can be evoked at an auspicious moment by the proper word, the proper voice, the proper touch. That is why I say, Go thy way, O my Brother. Be simple, natural, spontaneous, courageous, free. Neither anticipate your years, nor lag child-like behind them. For verily, it is as ridiculous to dye the hair white as to dye it black. Ah, be foolish while thou art young; it is never too late to be wise. Indulge thy fancy, follow the bent of thy mind; for in so doing thou