The third question thou didst pose is about the meaning of
the saying of the philosophers who say: 'From one naught can be created by
one.' The essence of this saying is false when the cause referred to the
eternal and the absolute essence of God. God hath no connection with anything
and never does aught leave his Being. The quality of God (of not engendering
and in not being engendered) is proven in all states. If the meaning of the
cause is the First Remembrance, that is to say Him Whom God created Himself,
then this saying becometh true. What is other than one cannot explain the
action of the Essence to be unique. This is the religion of the pure Imams.
It is in this way that God, in the Hadith-i-Quasi, summoned
Jonas: 'O Jonas! Dost thou know the Will?' Jonas answered, 'No.' God said: 'The
Will is the First Remembrance.' It is not possible that God create a thing from
nothing except that thing be unique, for the first rank of the Remembrance is
to demonstrate the unity of God. In the beginning of the degree of unity it is
not possible to be other than one. Thus the saying of the philosophers that
'the cause of all the existences is the essence of God' is a falsehood. There
is no connection between God and His creatures. It is not admissible that the
essence of God be a place of change. To be so there must be a similitude
between the cause and the effect. Therefore the truth is this: The cause of
things is the First Remembrance that God created from nothing. And He made in
it the cause of all the creatures. As the Imam revealeth, upon Him be blessings,
'The cause of things is the Handiwork of God and this Handiwork hath no cause.
- The
Báb (From a Tablet to an individual, provisionally translated by Keven Brown from
Nicholas' French translation in Le Beyan Arabe, pp. 10-12)
