universal speech existing outside the mind that, in and of itself, is divided into command and prohibition; rather, if it is a command it is not a prohibition, and if it is a prohibition it is not a command.

For this reason, whenever a universal is subdivided, its name must be applied to each of its species and branches: every individual human being is called a human, every single instance of speech is called speech, and every particular act of knowledge is called knowledge.

This is the very distinction teachers give beginners in Arabic grammar. They say: Whoever declares, “Speech is divided into noun, verb, and particle,” intends to partition the composite whole into its parts and components; whereas the one who classifies the genus says, “The word is divided into noun or (1) verb or (2) particle.”

Whenever a genus is divided into its kinds, or into the individuals (3) belonging to those kinds, or whenever a kind is divided into its individual instances, the name of the entity being divided must be truly predicated of the kinds and individuals; otherwise they are not genuine subdivisions of it. And whether he (4) intends this or not, whichever of the two sorts of division he adopts, in neither of them can one subdivision be identical with another—and no rational person has ever claimed that such identity is possible (5).

Thus no one would say that, within a universal speech divided into command and prohibition, the command is the prohibition; nor that a particular, concrete utterance divisible into components such as command and prohibition, or noun, verb, and particle, entails that the command is the prohibition or (6) that the noun is the particle. Whichever of the two types of division they select, their assertion contradicts the self-evident truths acknowledged by all rational people.