7وَنَفسٍ وَما سَوّاهاMuhammad AsadConsider the human self,1 and how it is formed in accordance with what it is meant to be,2As in so many other instances, the term nafs, which has a very wide range of meanings (see first sentence of note 1 on 4:1), denotes here the human self or personality as a whole: that is, a being composed of a physical body and that inexplicable life-essence loosely described as "soul".Lit., "and that which has made [or "formed"] it (sawwaha) in accordance with. . .", etc. For this particular connotation of the verb sawwa, see note 1 on 87:2, which represents the oldest Qur'anic instance of its use in the above sense. The reference to man and that which constitutes the "human personality", as well as the implied allusion to the extremely complex phenomenon of a life-entity in which bodily needs and urges, emotions and intellectual activities are so closely intertwined as to be indissoluble, follows organically upon a call to consider the inexplicable grandeur of the universe - so far as it is perceptible and comprehensible to man - as a compelling evidence of God's creative power.