Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/234

222 it.’ (Q.) ‘Are the soul and the body alike in reward and punishment, or is the [body, as the] luster of lusts and doer of sins, alone affected with punishment?’ (A.) ‘The inclination unto lusts and sins may be the cause of earning reward by the withholding of the soul therefrom and the repenting thereof; but the affair is in the hand of Him who doth what He will, and by their contraries are things distinguished. Thus subsistence is necessary to the body, but there is no body without soul; and the purification of the soul is in making clean the intent in this world and taking thought to that which shall profit in the world to come. Indeed, soul and body are like two horses running for a wager or two foster-brothers or two partners in affairs. By the intent are good deeds distinguished and thus the body and soul are partners in actions and in reward and punishment, and in this they are like the blind man and the cripple with the overseer of the garden.’ ‘How so?’ asked Shimas, and the prince said, THE BLIND MAN AND THE CRIPPLE.

‘A blind man and a cripple were travelling-companions and used to beg in company. One day they sought admission into the garden of some one of the benevolent, and a kind-hearted man hearing their talk, took compassion on them and carried them into his garden, where he left them and went away, bidding them do no waste nor damage therein. When the fruits became ripe, the cripple said to the blind man, “Harkye, I see ripe fruits and long for them; but I cannot rise to them, to eat thereof; so go thou, for thou art sound of limb, and fetch us thereof, that we may eat.” “Out on thee!” replied