The ethical system of the ideal state revealed in the Qur'an does not deprive man of the enjoyments of the good things of life, precisely because both privation and overindulgence may lead to the same consequences: neglect of the cosmos as a whole and of the pursuit of cosmic knowledge. The Islamic system strongly rejects man's total surrender to enjoyment of affluence and comfort even as it rejects his surrender to privation and abstinence in which he loses himself in subjective psychic pursuits. On the contrary, Islam seeks to make its people a community of the golden mean, to orient them toward pure virtue, to develop their knowledge of the cosmos, and to master all that it contains. The Qur'an continually speaks of the cosmos and of what it contains in a way directing us toward increasing our knowledge of it. It speaks about the new moons, about the sun and the moon, day and night, the earth and the creatures that roam over it, the sky and the stars which adorn it, the sea whose surface is crisscrossed with ships sailing in pursuit of God's bounty, of the animals we take as beasts of burden and others as ornaments, and of all that the earth contains for knowledge and art. In speaking about all these, the Qur'an asks man not only to look into them and study them but to enjoy their effects and to feel grateful to God for His bounty. With such discipline as the Qur'an has enjoined, and by following its insistent call to seek cosmic knowledge, man may fulfill his destiny. If he responds to the 'call of the Qur'an and fulfills its requisite rational contemplation of the cosmos, he bases his economic and social system upon solid and worthy foundations.