approximation to the view of Jahm ibn Safwan, who held that after the judgment both heaven and hell would pass away and God remain alone as He was in the beginning. To these doctrines Abu Hudhayl seems to have been led by two considerations, both significant for the drift of the Mu'tazilites. First, there was about their reasonings a grimness of logic touched with utilitarianism. Thus, from their position that man could come by the light of his reason to the knowledge of God and of virtue, they drew the conclusion that it was man's duty so to attain, and that God would damn eternally every man who did not. Their utilitarianism, again, comes out strikingly in their view of heaven and hell. These, at present, were serving no useful purpose because they had no inhabitants; therefore, at present they did not exist. But this made difficulties for Abu Hudhayl. What has a beginning must have an end. So he explained the end as the ceasing of all changes. Second, he shows clear evidence of influence from Greek philosophy. The Qur'an teaches that the world has been created in time; Aristotle, that it is from eternity and to eternity. The creation, Abu Hudhayl applied to changes; before that, the world was, but in eternal rest. Hereafter, all changes will cease; rest will again enter and endure to all eternity. We shall see how largely this doctrine was advanced and developed by his successors.

But there were further complications in the doctrine of man's actions and into some of these we must enter, on account of their later importance. Not everything that comes from the action of a man is by

his action. God has a creative part in it, apparently as regards the effects. Especially, knowledge in the mind of a pupil does not come from the teacher, but from God. The idea seems to be that the teacher may teach, but that the being taught in the pupil is a divine working. Similarly, he distinguished motions in the mind, which he held were not altogether due to the man, and external motions which were. There is given, too, to a man at the time of his performing an action an ability to perform the action, which is a special accident in him apart from any mere soundness of health or limb.

In these ways, Abu Hudhayl recognized God's working through man. Another of his positions had a similar basis and was a curious combination of historical criticism and mysticism, a combination which we shall find later in al-Ghazzali, a much greater man. The evidence of tradition for things dealing with the Unseen World (al-ghayb) he rejected. Twenty witnesses might hand on the tradition in question, but it was not to be received unless among them there was one, at least, of the People of Paradise. At all times, he taught, there were in the world these Friends of God (awliya Allah, sing. wali), who were protected against all greater sins and could not lie. It is the word of these that is the basis for belief, and the tradition is merely a statement of what they have said. This shows clearly how far the doctrine of the ecstatic life and of knowledge gained through direct intercourse between the believer and God had already advanced.

But Abu Hudhayl was only one in a group of daring