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Iranian Influence on Moslem Literature, Part I by Konstantin Aleksandrovich Inostrantzev
page 101 of 175 (57%)
decided in his favour and against the other and then heard the other and
gave judgment in favour of the latter as against the first. And when
again I reflected upon the frightful discomforts and straits of
monasticism I said, How trifling it is all in comparison with eternal
peace. And then once more thinking of the joys of the world I exclaimed,
How bitter and pernicious they are which lead to perpetual perdition and
its horrors; how can a man not regard as sweet the little bitterness
which is succeeded by sweet that endures and how can a man not regard as
bitter a bit of sweet that ends in greater and abiding bitterness? If it
was offered to a man that he should live a hundred years but that every
day he should be hacked to pieces and should be called to life again the
following day and so on, provided that at the close of the century he
should be delivered from the torture and pain and be in security and
delight, he would account as nothing the whole years. How can a man then
not bear the few days of asceticism, the inconveniences of which are
succeeded by much that is beautiful? And we know that the entire world
bears privation and torment and that man from his origin as foetus till
the end of his days is subject to one suffering after another. Moreover,
we find the following in books of medicine.

[Sidenote: Man in embryo: his torments till and after death.]

[Sidenote: Tribulations of human existence.]

When the liquid, of which the perfect child is to be built, enters the
uterus of the woman, and mixes itself with her liquid substance and her
blood it becomes thick and pulpy. Next the liquid is stirred by a wind
and becomes like sour milk and later on hard like curdled milk. After a
certain number of days the individual members become separate. If it is
a man child its face is turned to the back of the mother; if it is a
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