Chapter I · The Sixth Paragraph
6. The ideal and the real
Book page 12
The sixth paragraph (page 12) draws out the consequence of the fifth. If spirit already permeates the world, then spiritual life does not require leaving the world.
The Ideas
The ideal and the real. The ideal is the spiritual: what ought to be and what gives life meaning. The real is the actual world of matter, forces and daily circumstances.
Renunciation. Withdrawing from the world through ascetic practice in order to be spiritual.
The ideal appropriating the real. The ideal works continually to take in the real, convert it into itself and illuminate it. The language has a Hegelian ring, carrying on from the third paragraph.
Subject and object. The knower and what is known, a central division in modern European philosophy.
“The mathematical without and the biological within.” The outer world as science measures it, and the inner world as something living and growing. The contrast echoes Bergson’s division between intellect and life.
Saying “yes” to matter. Affirming the physical world as the place where spiritual life is carried out. This may echo Nietzsche’s “yes” to life, though that link is an interpretation.
A realistic regulation of life. Mastering the world in order to organize human life in practice. This points ahead to the book’s later discussion of law and society.
Iqbal’s text
Read the paragraph now. The small numbers in the margin are the book’s page numbers.
12Thus the affirmation of spirit sought by Christianity would come not by the renunciation of external forces which are already permeated by the illumination of spirit, but by a proper adjustment of man's relation to these forces in view of the light received from the world within. It is the mysterious touch of the ideal that animates and sustains the real, and through it alone we can discover and affirm the ideal. With Islam the ideal and the real are not two opposing forces which cannot be reconciled. The life of the ideal consists, not in a total breach with the real which would tend to shatter the organic wholeness of life into painful oppositions, but in the perpetual endeavour of the ideal to appropriate the real with a view eventually to absorb it, to convert it into itself and to illuminate its whole being. It is the sharp opposition between the subject and the object, the mathematical without and the biological within, that impressed Christianity. Islam, however, faces the opposition with a view to overcome it. This essential difference in looking at a fundamental relation determines the respective attitudes of these great religions towards the problem of human life in its present surroundings. Both demand the affirmation of the spiritual self in man, with this difference only that Islam, recognizing the contact of the ideal with the real, says 'yes' to the world of matter and points the way to master it with a view to discover a basis for a realistic regulation of life.
How Iqbal Uses Them
He draws the practical consequence. If external forces are “already permeated” by spirit, renouncing them makes no sense. What is needed is “a proper adjustment” of our relation to them, guided by the light from within.
He binds the ideal and the real together. The ideal animates the real, and only through the real can the ideal be found. Neither can be had alone, and a total break between them would shatter life.
He gives the ideal the active role. The two are not simply balanced. The ideal is always working to absorb and illuminate the real.
He contrasts two attitudes. Christianity was struck by the opposition of subject and object, and Islam faces it in order to overcome it. As in the fifth paragraph, this is a broad contrast and is Iqbal’s own framing.
He finishes turning the ladder around. In the ladder, matter was the lowest point, to be left behind. Here, it is affirmed and mastered, and it becomes the basis for organizing life.