is not the same meaning as that which subsists in the mind and is understood from the verse, “Perish the hands of Abu Lahab, and perish he.” (1)

There is no doubt that the meaning (2) conveyed by imperative formulations is not the same as that conveyed by declarative ones. Either he will concede this or he will deny it. If he concedes—as some have affirmed that speech consists of five distinct realities—then one may engage him on that basis. If he refuses, he is told:

Knowledge of the diversity of these meanings is necessary and self-evident; it is no less certain than our awareness of the succession of letters and their attendant meanings, or of the diversity of sounds. Indeed, the various sounds uttered by a single speaker resemble one another far more than do those supposedly eternal meanings that subsist in the Essence. This is something perceptible to the senses, (3) and whoever denies it deserves to have the discussion with him terminated even more readily than with the former objector. At that point we say to him:

These differing meanings are, for us, mutually exclusive, for we find within ourselves (4) that when we apprehend the meanings of one discourse we cannot, at the same moment, apprehend the meanings of every discourse; just as we find within ourselves that when we are speaking (5) with one sound we cannot simultaneously speak with another. If this impossibility stems from the very natures of the two meanings and the two sounds, then it is impossible for them to subsist in a single locus. But if it arises from our own incapacity—just as we are unable to summon numerous kinds of knowledge at once—then it does not follow that such a thing is impossible for Allah, nor that it is impossible for Allah to create within any of His creatures as many distinct meanings and as many distinct sounds as He wills.

His statement: “Any two different sounds are mutually contradictory; it is impossible for them to coexist in the same locus at the same instant.”

We reply: What we actually experience is that we cannot combine two sounds in one locus at one and the same time, whether those two sounds are different or identical; hence the impossibility does not lie in