The reasonable and the unreasonable

I intended with this book in your hands to stand with the ancestors – in their rational views and in both their irrational outbursts – so I stand with them at moments I capture from their cultural life, to see: what kind were their intellectual problems? And how did they seek solutions for them? But when I did that, I did not try to experience their times and embody their spirits to see with their eyes and feel with their hearts, but I preferred for myself to keep my era and my culture, then listen to them as if I were a visitor sitting silently to listen to what is being discussed around him, then afterward to give an opinion – for himself and for his contemporaries – that accepts this and rejects that. I divided the book into two parts: one I made for my journey on the path of reason among them, and the other for some of what I saw among them that was contrary to reason, relying on what they believed to be higher than it; and I deliberately made the first part larger than the second, so that the ratio between the two sizes inherently indicates the ratio I see occurring in their actual lives between what they weighed with the scale of reason and what they left to the outburst of emotion... In this book, I am like a traveler in a strange land, who has pitched his tent in this country sometimes and in that country sometimes, whenever he finds a path that draws attention and deserves sight and hearing... And I hope for this book that its good outweighs its evil and its correctness is greater than its error.