is impossible. Rather, innate nature tends to bring it about, just as a child’s innate nature disposes him to drink his mother’s milk. If no impediment intervened, he would necessarily drink.

Yet an illness in the child or his mother, or some other impediment, may arise and cause him to turn away from drinking her milk.

The servant’s love for his Lord is more deeply rooted in his innate nature than his love of his mother’s milk.

Allah Most High says:

“When you have completed your rites, remember Allah as you remember your fathers, or with even greater remembrance.”

If a fully sufficient cause could not exist within innate nature, what innate nature calls for could only arise through an external determining factor. This is contrary to reality. Moreover, in the absence of external causes, innate nature must be either sound or corrupt. The latter is impossible, so the former must be the case.

[The Sixth Argument]

The cause present in innate nature either necessarily entails knowledge and love, or tends to produce them without necessarily entailing them. In either case, the point is established.

[The Seventh Argument]

The soul is never devoid of awareness and will; indeed, such an absence is impossible. Awareness and will are essential attributes of its very nature: a soul cannot be conceived of except as aware and willing.

Nor may it be said that, with regard to the Creator, exalted is He, the soul may lack awareness of either His existence or His nonexistence, and neither love Him nor lack love for Him. That would mean that acknowledging Him and loving Him are not necessary concomitants of the soul’s existence, even when no opposing influence is present. Rather, this is false.