“FROM MOSES TO MOSES” 155
nothing we know from our worldly experience, from which it differs in
both its permanence, the diffi culty in achieving it, and the plea sure that
accompanies it; and Avicenna tries to illustrate our diffi culty in grasping
and depicting this plea sure, saying:
In this respect, we are like a eunuch, who does not crave the plea-
sure of sexual intercourse nor does he desire it, because he has never
experienced it and does not know what it is, although both induc-
tion and widespread sayings inform him of its existence and indicate
to him that sexual intercourse entails plea sure. This is our situation
regarding the plea sure of whose existence we know but which we
cannot conceive.^4This inability holds true for all human beings, but phi losophers and
prophets, who have perfected their rational faculty, have some notion of
what awaits them, and they long for it, whereas the multitudes are totally
ignorant of this possibility:
Know that just as young boys are insensitive to the pleasures and
pains proper to adults, and they poke fun at them, and fi nd plea sure
in that which in reality is not pleasing and which mature people dis-
taste, so are the young of intellect— mundane people and those at-
tached to the body— in the eyes of those of mature intellect, who are
the ones freed from Matter.^5For Avicenna, the prophets inform people “through symbols and simili-
tudes derived from things that for them are majestic and great” and “tell
them about eternal bliss and misery in parables they can comprehend and
conceive... and that there are pleasures that are great possessions.”^6 But
the diffi culty in grasping spiritual plea sure is refl ected also in the inability
to convey it in words. Avicenna makes repeated attempts to give his
reader an idea of spiritual bliss, often resorting to parables and similes.
Thus, for example, in his attempt to convince us of the superiority of
spiritual pleasures, he evokes the case of the chess player, who prefers the
joy of winning to the pleasures of food and love making. In the same
context he also reminds us that people will often shun physical pleasures,
out of fear that such pleasures would bring them reproach and shame
(^4) Al-mabda wal-maad, ed. Abdallah Nurani (Tehran, 1 343H), 112; on this work, see
Gutas,Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 98– 99; In Najat, 479, Avicenna lists the
eunuch together with the blind and deaf as examples of people who cannot apprehend
certain pleasures; see R. Michot, “L’eschatologie d’Avicenne selon F.D. al- Razi,” Revue
Philosophique de Louvain 87 (1989): 243.
(^5) Al-mabda wal-maad, 114.
(^6) Healing:Metaphysics X, trans. M. E. Marmura, in Lerner and Mahdi, Medieval Po litical
Philosophy, 101.