However, what they have stated is deficient and falls short in several respects:

First: Their words are no more than a sweeping generalization. They do not clarify the kinds of desire and anger that may be employed and those that may not, nor do they specify the proper measure of each or the degree to which they should be restrained. It is like someone who merely knows that the bodily humors are divided into hot and cold and that these humors ought to be brought into balance—an abstract statement that is of no practical use for preserving health or curing disease.

Second: Suppose, for argument’s sake, that balance were actually achieved in the faculties of appetite and anger. Even that would not by itself bring about felicity, and even if one were to add what they call “knowledge,” they have no proof that felicity ensues from it. The Messengers are unanimous that this alone does not confer true happiness.

Third: They have failed to identify either the type or the amount of knowledge by which felicity is attained.

Fourth: The knowledge that forms the very root and pinnacle of felicity is knowledge of Allah—yet they are the group farthest removed from it. Among the well-known doctrines that treat of divine science, none is more remote from the truth than theirs, for even the views of the Jews and the Christians concerning