and reconciled their hearts, because of their concord in terms of orientation and their deliverance from the shackles of the attributes of the soul which necessarily entail backsliding and obduracy by virtue of their residing in the world of contrareity and the difference between them in terms of nature. For the heart, as long as it halts with the soul and its desires and [as long as] it has acquired mastery over it by its attributes, it will attract it down towards the lower aspect and will render its [the heart's] goals particular in line with what corresponds to its best interests, such that it [the heart] ends up demanding what is forbidden it by another [heart], whereupon mutual enmity and hatred ensues [between them], and the irascible faculties that seek repute, honour, vanquishing power, victory, leadership and authority will then hold sway and haughtiness, obstinacy, pride and disdain will result, leading to a mutual boycots, alienation, warring and quarrelling. But every time it moves further away from the lower aspect by orienting itself towards the upper aspect and towards being illumined by the lights of unity of the attributes or that of the Essence, it [the heart] will rise higher from the station of the soul and will connect to the spirit and its goals will become universal, no longer being mutually exclusive or the object of rivalry, because of the possibility [now] of its being actualised for one [heart] without depriving another from it, and it [the heart] will then incline towards another with whom there is genus-correspondence in terms of purity, [inclining towards the other] with the love that derives from the essence because of the intensity of correspondence [between them]. The closer that it [the heart] is to the unity, the stronger the power of love in it, by virtue of its extreme propinquity to the one that follows its own religion, much like the radii that connect the circumference of a circle with its centre. Thus the intensity of affinity between these [hearts] is commensurate with the intensity of faith [in them]. Had you expended all that is in the earth, you could not have reconciled their hearts, because what is in the lower aspect [only] increases their mutual enmity and opposition by virtue of the intensity of their covetousness of, and their dogged rivalry over, it; but God reconciled their hearts, by means of the light of unity which bequeathes spiritual love and affinity of the heart. For love is the shadow of unity, mutual affinity the shadow of love, and justice the shadow of mutual affinity. Truly He is Mighty, with the power to repel the disbelievers and vanquish them by means of the coming together of the believers and their mutual harmony, Wise, doing that out of some wisdom in order to cast mutual affinity and love between these [believers] and [to cast] division and disagreement of opinion between those [disbelievers].