Then, if he says that it is absolute without any condition, it follows that it can be truly predicated of every existent, just as animality, taken absolutely without any condition, can be truly predicated of humans, horses, and other animals. This is agreed upon among rational people. It would therefore follow that every existent is necessarily existent, if the necessarily existent is absolute existence without any condition, as Sadr al-Qūnawī and others like him among the esotericist heretics maintain—the esotericists among the Rāfidah and among the Sufis.

It is well known that this flies in the face of sensory experience and reason, and represents the utmost in religious heresy.

If he says that it is absolute with absoluteness as a condition, as some heretics of both groups maintain—those who deny both sides of a contradiction with regard to it—they have themselves established in their logic that what is absolute with absoluteness as a condition exists only in the mind, not in external reality. It would further follow that they must not describe it as necessary, as a cause, as a subject or object of intellection, or as a lover or beloved. All these descriptions prevent existence from being absolute with absoluteness as a condition and distinguish it from what is not so described. Yet what is absolute without any condition has neither specificity nor distinction.

And if they say that it is absolute on condition that all affirmative attributes are denied of it, and that it is described by negations and relations rather than affirmative attributes, as Ibn Sīnā maintains