"From my childhood I was inclined to think out things for myself. The result of this attitude was that I revolted against authority; and all the beliefs that had fixed themselves in my mind from childhood lost their original importance. I thought that such beliefs based on mere authority were equally entertained by Jews, Christians, and followers of other religions. Real knowledge must eradicate all doubt. For instance, it is self-evident that ten is greater than three. If a person, however, endeavours to prove the contrary by an appeal to his power of turning a stick into a snake, the performance would indeed be wonderful, though it cannot touch the certainty of the proposition in question"[75:1]. He examined afterwards, all the various claimants of "Certain Knowledge" and finally found it in Ṣūfīism.
[73:1] "It (Al-Ghazālī's work on the Revivication of the sciences of religion) has so remarkable a resemblance to the _Discourse sur la methode_ of Descartes, that had any translation of it existed in the days of Descartes everyone would have cried against the plagiarism". (Lewes's History of Philosophy: Vol. II. p. 50).
[73:2] Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 20, p. 103.
With their view of the nature of substance, the As̱ẖ‘arite, rigid monotheists as they were, could not safely discuss the nature of the human soul. Al-G̱ẖazālī alone seriously took up the problem, and to this day it is difficult to define, with accuracy, his view of the nature of God. In him, like Borger and Solger in Germany, Ṣūfī pantheism and the As̱ẖ‘arite dogma of personality appear to harmonise together, a reconciliation which makes it difficult to say whether he was a Pantheist, or a Personal Pantheist of the type of Lotze. The soul, according to Al-G̱ẖazālī, perceives things. But perception as an attribute can exist only in a substance or essence which is absolutely free from all the attributes of body. In his Al-Madnūn[75:2], he explains why the prophet declined to reveal the nature of the soul. There are, he says, two kinds of men; ordinary men and thinkers. The former who look upon materiality as a condition of existence, cannot conceive an immaterial substance. The latter are led, by their logic, to a conception of the soul which sweeps away all difference between God and the individual soul. Al-G̱ẖazālī, therefore, realised the Pantheistic drift of his own inquiry, and preferred silence as to the ultimate nature of the soul.