scussing some scientific question. All took part in it with the
exception of Taury, who suddenly rose and recited:--

Many cooing doves mourn in the mid-day heat,
Sadly under the roof of foliage overhead,
Remembering old companions and days gone by;
Their lament awakens my sorrow also,
My mourning rouses them, and often theirs disturbs my sleep;
I do not understand their cooing, and they do not understand
my weeping:
But through, my sorrow of heart I know them, and through
their heart-sorrow they know me.

Hardly had those present heard these verses than they all fell into a
state of ecstatic contemplation.

Ibrahim ben Adham, the celebrated Sufi, once heard the following
verses:--

Everything is forgiven thee, except estrangement from Us:
We pardon thee all the past, and only that remains which has
escaped Our eyes (_i.e._, nothing).

They immediately caused him to fall into a trance which lasted
twenty-four hours. Ghazzali, who himself borrowed much from the Sufis,
and was a diligent student of their doctrine, seeks to explain these
strange phenomena on psychological grounds. He divides the ecstatic
conditions which the hearing of poetical recitations produces into four
classes. The first, which is the lowest, is that of the simple sensuous
delight in melody. The second class is that of pleasure in the melody
and of understanding the words in their apparent sense. The third class
consists of those who apply the meaning of the words to the relations
between man and God. To this class belongs the would-be initiate into
Sufism; he has necessarily a goal marked out for him to aim at, and this
goal is the knowledge of God, meeting Him and union with Him by the way
of secret contemplation, and the removal of the veil which conceals Him.
In order to compass this aim the Sufi has a special path to follow; he
must perform various ascetic practices and overcome certain spiritual
obstacles in doing so. Now when, during the recitation of poetry, the
Sufi hears mention made of blame or praise, of acceptance or refusal, of
union with the Beloved or separation from Him, of lament over a departed
joy or longing for a look, as often occurs in Arabic poetry, one or the
other of these accords with his spiritual state and acts upon him, like
a spark on tinder, to set his heart aflame. Longing and love overpower
him and unfold to him manifold vistas of spiritual experience.

The fourth an