been correct. But if he means that He can be living, knowing, and powerful without life, knowledge, and power, then he has erred. His essence, in its reality, necessarily entails these attributes. To posit its existence without these attributes is therefore an invalid supposition with no reality. An essence detached from all attributes can only be conceived in the mind, not exist in external reality. These matters are discussed at length in their proper place.

The point here is that making something known through definitions or proofs may involve explaining it by something less clear than itself. Obscurity and clarity may be relative: something may be clear to some people but not to others, or to a person in certain circumstances but not at another time. Thus, someone may benefit from certain definitions and proofs at one time but not at another.

The greater and more frequent people’s need to know and mention something, the greater and more extensive their knowledge and mention of it will be. The ways of knowing it will be more numerous and more evident, and the names by which it is identified will be more numerous and more expressive of its meanings.

A created thing that people conceive of and speak about more than others will have more names and descriptions among them than others do—for example, a lion, a calamity, mukhammar, a sword, and the like. Each of these things has numerous names in the language, and one name conveys a meaning not conveyed by