O soul: How can pleasure be found in this world? Every rank the soul occupies in this world requires patience, and patience is bitter of taste. Any sweet thing, if mixed with bitterness, becomes bitter itself. Whenever the soul recoils from patience and from being disciplined by it, then goes seeking a satisfying meaning [elsewhere], it falls into wandering—tasting this and leaving it, pursuing that and then severing it, desiring this and then rejecting it.

This is a base meaning, a vile action, and a mean character. Whenever the soul is disciplined by patience in any rank whatsoever among the ranks of this world, the bitterness of patience becomes coupled with it. From all of this explanation, it follows that:

Either man is a wandering "taster," thus attaining the rank of vileness and meanness;

Or he accepts a righteous rank among the ranks of this world while being patient with it, thus attaining the endurance of bitterness for the duration of his stay in the world of nature.

Indeed, consuming bitterness while acquiring honor and glory is better than consuming sweetness while acquiring vileness and meanness.

O soul: Indeed, the aim of Truth and the decree of the Intellect is that things remain fixed in their natural order; when they are so, how beautiful, fair, and just they are! This is like the artisan: it is he who should employ his tool, not the tool that should employ him.