We therefore ask: Is the First’s knowledge of the existence of every species and genus—limitless in number—identical to His knowledge of Himself, or is it something else? If you say it is something else, you have conceded multiplicity and overturned your own principle; but if you say it is identical, you differ in no way from one who claims that a human being’s knowledge of other things is the very same as his knowledge of himself and as his very essence—an assertion fit only for the feebleminded.

It has been said that the definition of a single reality is that the mind cannot at once affirm and deny it. Because a single item of knowledge is one, the imagination cannot conceive it as simultaneously existing and not existing. Yet the mind can readily picture a person knowing himself while remaining ignorant of something else; hence it is said that his knowledge of the other is distinct from his knowledge of himself. For were the two identical, then negating one would negate the other and affirming one would affirm the other, for it is impossible that Zayd be both existent and nonexistent—Zayd himself—at one and the same moment. No such impossibility arises with respect to a person’s knowledge of an external object alongside his self-knowledge; and the same applies to the First’s knowledge of His own essence alongside His knowledge of what is other than Himself: one can imagine the existence of either without the other, and therefore they are two distinct things. By contrast, it is impossible to conceive of His essence existing without His essence; were everything like that, imagination itself would be impossible.

Accordingly, every philosopher who admits that the First knows something beyond His own essence has, willy-nilly, affirmed multiplicity. Should it be objected: “He does not know the other by primary intention; rather, He knows His own essence as the source of all things, and from that follows a secondary, consequential knowledge of the whole. He cannot know His essence except as the source, for that is the very reality of His essence; and He cannot know His essence as source without the other’s entering His knowledge implicitly and by necessity. There is nothing absurd in His essence having concomitants, and this does not entail multiplicity in the quiddity of the essence—what is impossible is only multiplicity within the essence itself,”

he replies: The answer may be given from several angles.

First: Your assertion that He knows His essence as the source is sheer presumption; rather, He ought to know the existence of—