for the subduer is the one who is characterized by strength and dominance, and such a notion (1) can only be conceived of with respect to a body. Yet if the intellect can affirm that subduing power for something that is not a body, it will not be incapable of affirming exaltedness of essence for something likewise non-corporeal.

Similarly, whoever interprets “finger” as meaning power has merely fled from one attribute to another, for power too is an attribute that subsists in the subject, an accident among its accidents.

The same holds for the one who explains “laughter” as pleasure and then explains pleasure as will—he has only moved from one attribute to another.

Why, then, not leave the texts as they stand and refrain from violating their sanctity, since (2) your figurative interpretation does not free you from what you sought to escape? The interpreter must either propose a positive meaning or construe the wording as sheer negation. If he opts for any positive meaning whatsoever, the very objection he fled from confronts him in that meaning.

Should he say, “I affirm that meaning in a way that does not entail assimilation,”

he is told, “Why did you not affirm the very meaning indicated by the text itself in a way that does not entail assimilation?”

If he replies, “That is something (3) beyond comprehension,”

he is asked, “How, then, did you comprehend it in the meaning you affirmed, when you and all the people on earth grasp unseen realities only through the same means by which you understand what is observable (4)? Were it not so, neither you nor anyone else would comprehend anything unseen at all. Therefore, whatever you have advanced in your interpretation—if it has a counterpart in the observable realm…"