Chapter V: Duties Towards Companions and Friends
(1) First kind: A man is loved for his own merits. It is possible that a man can become an object of love of another in a natural way, when he sees him, knows him and thinks him good after seeing his character and conduct. Everything beautiful is an object of pleasure to a man who loves beauty. There is another thing for love. That is the internal qualities. The Prophet said :
Souls are the arrayed soldiers. Out of them, those who know one another love one another and those who do not know one another have got differences of opinion. The cause of difference is absence of knowledge of one another and the cause of love is knowledge of one another. Love grows out of acquaintance. In another narration the Prophet said : Souls are arrayed soldiers, one soul meeting with the other soul in the horizon becomes near. Some learned men explain it by saying that Cod, after creating souls, let them off in the air and they are roaming round the Throne. The souls which know one another in the air meet one another in the world and love one another. The Prophet said :
The souls of two believers meet with each other from a distance of one day's path though one soul has not seen another soul. The Prophet said : When a believer enters an assembly of one hundred hypocrites and only one believer, he will sit near the believer. If a hypocrite enters an assembly of one hundred believers and of one hyporcrite he will sit near the hypocrite. It is seen from this that the same nature attracts one another though they have got no acquaintance. The sage Malek-b-Dinar said :
Out of ten persons, two cannot agree, but if the nature of the two is the same, they agree. This proves that a man loves another man of the same nature not for gaining any benefit, not for acquiring wealth, but for their nature being the same and for their internal qualities being the same.
(2) Second class: A man loves another for gaining the love of a third person. The thing which becomes the means of a dear thing becomes also dear. For this reason, gold and silver are dear to men although they have got no attribute of their own, as they cannot be eaten, nor used as clothes but they are the means of getting these
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things. These are men among the people who are loved like gold and silver, as they become the means of reaching the destination or gaining the goal and by their help, wealth, name and fame are earned.