This is why a human being, who is capable of knowledge, is more perfect than an inanimate object, even though human knowledge involves change and motion absent from the inanimate object.

Likewise, a being that is alive, capable of sensation, and able to move is more perfect than one that is not.

The more perfect the attributes of perfection, the more perfect the being possessing them. Thus, a human being is more perfect than a beast, and an animal is more perfect than an inanimate object. Even if its knowledge and action are assumed to entail motion—indeed, spatial motion—it is more perfect than something that has no knowledge and does not move voluntarily. A being that moves voluntarily is more perfect than one wholly incapable of movement. This is what reason tells us about existing things.

The more one reflects and examines rational proofs, the clearer it becomes that the arguments he reports from Aristotle for denying knowledge are among the most unsound arguments—indeed, unsound in the extreme. They rest on two premises.

[The arguments Ibn Malkā reports from Aristotle for denying knowledge are invalid in several respects]

The first premise is that knowledge entails certain things.

The second is that those things must be denied because they are imperfections.

This is invalid in several respects:

One is the counterargument already presented.

Another is that the absence of knowledge is a greater imperfection than those consequences. Even if they are assumed to involve what these thinkers call an imperfection, the imperfection involved in the absence of knowledge would be greater. It is therefore impermissible to accept the greater of two imperfections to avoid the lesser, on the assumption that these thinkers have deemed both to be imperfections.