A particularly straightforward example is the establishment of an agent on the basis of two self-evident premises:

The first is that the human being has come into being.

The second is that whatever comes into being must have someone who brings it into being.

Abū al-Hasan, along with the vast majority of rational people, regarded the second premise as self-evident, contrary to al-Qādī and those who agreed with him, who sought to establish it through arguments less compelling and less evident than the premise itself.

Nevertheless, these obscure, circuitous approaches and others like them may benefit those who have not grasped the clear, direct approaches, or who have encountered some doubt concerning them, as explained earlier.

As for the first premise—namely, that human beings, fruits, rain, clouds, and similar things have come into being—it is known through observation and is self-evident, for the coming into being of events is witnessed.

Those among the proponents of indivisible atoms and prime matter who maintain that what comes into being consists only of the attributes of bodies, not the bodies themselves, or their form, not their matter, can establish on that basis that there is one who brings things into being. This is the approach mentioned by al-Rāzī and others: reasoning from the coming into being of the attributes of bodies.

Those who reject this view, however—and they are the majority of rational people—hold that what comes into being is the very entities perceived by the senses.

Abū al-Hasan was among those who affirmed indivisible atoms. Yet he did not content himself with arguing that attributes come into being; rather, he sought to establish that the drop of semen itself comes into being. He established this by arguing that it necessarily involves events, and whatever is inseparable from events is