Consider the world of created beings, how varied and diverse
they are in species, yet with one sole origin. All the differences that appear
are those of outward form and colour. This diversity of type is apparent
throughout the whole of nature.
Behold a beautiful garden full of flowers, shrubs, and
trees. Each flower has a different charm, a peculiar beauty, its own delicious
perfume and beautiful colour. The trees too, how varied are they in size, in
growth, in foliage—and what different fruits they bear! Yet all these flowers,
shrubs and trees spring from the self-same earth, the same sun shines upon them
and the same clouds give them rain.
So it is with humanity. It is made up of many races, and its
peoples are of different colour, white, black, yellow, brown and red—but they
all come from the same God, and all are servants to Him. This diversity among
the children of men has unhappily not the same effect as it has among the
vegetable creation, where the spirit shown is more harmonious. Among men exists
the diversity of animosity, and it is this that causes war and hatred among the
different nations of the world.
- ‘Abdu’l-Baha (From a talk, October 28, 1911, Paris; ‘Paris Talks’)
