Surah 16. An-Nahl, Ayah 70

Lit., "is reduced to a most abject age, so that he knows nothing after [having had] knowledge": alluding to the organic curve of man's growth, his acquisition of bodily strength, intelligence and experience, followed by gradual decay and, in some cases, the utter helplessness of senility, comparable to the helplessness of a new-born child. See also 22:5.

Our attention having been called to the remarkable transformations in life and nature, by which the Knowledge and Power of Allah work out His beneficient Plan for His creatures, we are reminded that man at best is but a feeble creature, but for the grace of Allah. We then pass on in the next Section to the differences in the gifts which men themselves enjoy, distinguishing them into so many categories. How much greater is the difference between the created things and their Creator?

Besides the mystery and beauty of the many processes going on in the working of Allah's Creation, there is the wonderful life of man himself on this earth; how he is created as a child; how he grows in intelligence and knowledge; and how his soul is taken back and his body suffers dissolution. In some cases he lives so long that he falls into a feeble old age like a second childhood; he forgets what he learnt and seems almost to go back in Time. Is not all this wonderful, and evidence of the Knowledge and Power of Allah?