Verily in Joseph and his brethren are signs for those who inquire, that is, glorious signs for those who inquire about their story and come to know it, [signs] which will prove to them, first, that pure [divine] election is a matter exclusive to God's wish, exalted be He, and is not connected to the effort made by a striving person or the will of a seeker, so that they might come to know the levels of pre-eternal preparedness; and, second, that the one for whom God wills good none can avert [that good] and the one whom He protects none can cause him misfortune or seek [to inflict on] him evil, so that their certainty and their trust might be strengthened and that they might witness the self-disclosures of His acts and His attributes; and, third, that Satan's plotting and his misguidance are something from which no one, not even prophets, are safe, so that they might be on their guard from him. But much more than all that is that these [signs] will apprise them by way of understanding - which is the transferral to the mental - of their states at the beginning, at the end and in-between the two and of the modality of their wayfaring to God in order to incite their yearning and their will, to sharpen their insight and to strengthen their resolve. That is because the similitude of Joseph is that of the heart which is prepared, of extreme beauty, dearly beloved to his father, Jacob the intellect, envied by his brothers from another mother (ʿallāt), namely, the five external senses and the five internal ones as well as [that of] anger (gha?ab) and lust (shahwa), [all being] the children of the soul, except for the memory, which is not envious of him and does not seek to harm him, leaving eleven [in total], matching their number. As for their envy of him and their seeking to harm him, this is [to be understood as being] through that these [senses] are by their nature drawn to their pleasures and appetites, and impede the use of the intellect, the reflective faculty, for the actualisation of the perfections of the heart such as forms of knowledge and [noble] character traits, and are averse to that. They only want it [the intellect] to use them to actualise corporeal pleasures and the appetites of those animal faculties. But there is no doubt that reflection (fikr) looks more to the heart [than to the senses] and it is more intensely and more abundantly inclined to the actualisation of felicities of the heart such as forms of knowledge and virtues [than to those of the senses]. That is the significance of their saying: