in a tradition related by al-Mufaddal, said, 'Have you ever thought what man's state would have been if from among all of his traits he missed the faculty of memory, and how many problems he would have suffered in his affairs, his livelihood and his experiences if he did not remember what was to his benefit and what was to his detriment, what he had taken and what he had given, and what he had seen and what he had heard? ... He would not have learned the way even if he had traversed the same path countless times, or retained a science even if he had kept learning it all his life, or professed a religion, or benefited by an experience, or been able to take a lesson from anything that had happened. Truly he would have lost the very basis of his humanity.'