Page:Tales from the Gulistan (1928).pdf/130

The Morals of Dervishes

son of a Faqih said to his father: "These heart-ravishing words of moralists make no impression upon me, because I do not see that their action are in conformity with their speeches. They teach people to abandon the world, but themselves accumulate silver and corn."

A scholar who only preaches and nothing more will not impress anyone when he speaks. He is a scholar who commits no evil, not he who speaks to men but acts no himself. Will you rejoin virtue to mankind, and forget your own souls? A scholar who follows his lusts and panders to his body is himself lost, although me may show the way.

The father replied: "My son! It is not proper merely on account of this vain fancy to turn away the face from the instructions of advisers, to travel on the road of vanity, to accuse the Ullemma to aberration, and whilst searching for an immaculate scholar, to remain excluded from the benefits of knowledge, like a blind man who one night fell into the mud, and shouted: 'O Mussalmâns! Hold a lamp on my path!' Whereon a courtesan who heard him asked: 'As thou canst not see the lamp, what wilt thou see with the lamp?' In the same way the preaching assembly is like the shop of a dealer in linen; because if thou bringest no money, thou canst obtain no wares, and if thou bringest no inclination of the assembly, thou wilt not get any felicity. Listen with thy soul's ear to a scholar, although his actions may not be like his doctrines. In vain does the gainsayer ask: 'How can a sleeper awaken a sleeper?' A man must receive into his ears the advice, although it may be written on a wall."

A piuos man came to the door of a college from a monastery; he broke the covenant of the company of those of the