Page:The Book of the Thousand Nights and One Night, Vol 8.djvu/237

225 in reason. He in whom these three qualities combine is perfect, and he who adds thereto the fear of God is in the right course.’ (Q.) ‘Tell me, is it possible, in the case of a man of learning and wisdom, endowed with sound judgment, lucid intelligence and keen and excelling wit, for desire and lust to change these his qualities?’ (A.) ‘[Yes]; for these passions, when they enter into a man, affect his wisdom and understanding and judgment and wit, and he is like the eagle, which abode in the upper air, of the excess of his subtlety and precaution against the hunters; but, as he was thus, he saw a fowler set up his nets and bait them with a piece of meat; which when he beheld, desire and lust thereof overcame him and he forgot that which he had seen of nets and of the sorry case of all birds that fell into them. So he swooped down from the sky and pouncing upon the piece of meat, was caught in the same snare and could not win free. When the fowler came up and saw the eagle taken in his net, he marvelled exceedingly and said, “I set up my nets, thinking to take therein pigeons and the like of small birds; how came this eagle to fall into it?” It is said that when desire and lust incite a man of understanding to aught, he considers the issue thereof and refrains from that which they make fair and overcomes his passions with his reason; for, when they urge him to aught, it behoves him to make his reason like unto a skilled horseman, who, mounting a skittish horse, curbs him with a sharp bit, so that he goes aright with him and carries him whither he will. As for the ignorant man, who has neither knowledge nor judgment and things are obscure to him and desire and lust lord it over him, verily he does according to his desire and his lust and is of the number of those that perish; nor is there among men one in sorrier case than he.’ (Q.) ‘When is knowledge profitable and when availeth reason to ward off the ill effects of VOL. VIII.