whatever motives, acts contrary to his own interests. Thus we read, 'And he went into his garden, being guilty of injustice to his own soul, and said, I do not think that this (garden) will ever perish . . . .' ¹ Non-recognition of the vanity and fleetingness of this world and the things of this world is an act of injustice to oneself.

The word, however, has passed over to express, in a general way, a wrong-doer, or wicked person, as opposed to him who doeth well (muhsin). We find, 'And on him and on Isaac, we bestowed our blessing, And among their offspring, some were righteous doers (muhsinun), and others to their own hurt undoubted sinners'; ² and the same general use of the word may be seen in the passage ' . . who say, O Lord, bring us forth from this city whose inhabitants are wicked.' ³

This technical use of the word is specially seen in such passages as the following, 'And who is more unjust than he who treateth the signs of God, as lies and turneth aside from them.' ⁴

The use of these different words in no way shows any intention of classifying wrong actions; for the same action may come under several or even all of these categories. If for instance, the action which is spoken of is a crime (dhanb), it is certainly an evil action (sayyiat), entailing evil consequences, and is sin (khatiat), or failure to come up to what is required.

Each word employed, then, does not denote some special class or form of wrong-doing, and if we desire to form any general conception of the teaching of the Qur'an from a consideration of the various terms employed to describe wrong-doing, we must review what we have said and try to see whether there is any principle underlying the whole. In closing this section, therefore, we shall attempt to summarize in a general way what we have already seen.

We have seen that some of the terms are at times employed in such a way as to suggest that the actions which they describe are considered evil or wrong because of the evil consequences which they bring on the doer of them. Such actions are against the interests of the sinner himself, and entail on him loss and injury when he expected gain and advantage. This may be said to be the lowest view that we find in the Qur'an, yet it is a perfectly correct view in so far as it goes, and when we remember that it does not stand alone as a complete doctrine of sin, there can be no objection to its presence. Sin is the doing of what is contrary to one's own interests, or the not-doing of what is for one's best interests either in this world or in the world to come. The motive of the action and the morality of the action scarcely come into consideration at all, or, if they do, the judgment on the action depends not on the motive which led to it, but on the consequences which resulted from it. From this point of view sin is the outcome of foolish ignorance; but ignorance in such matters is culpable, and is in fact only another name for unbelief.

But again, there are passages in which actions are spoken of which are considered wrong or sinful, because