of these two must conceive of what he denies and what he affirms. Whoever affirms an attribute of Allah, glorified and exalted be He, does so only after understanding its counterpart among existing things. He thereby affirms the meaning in the abstract, while ascribing to Him a distinctive quality that none can share. Whoever denies any of these things of Allah denies only something whose counterpart he has known among existing things. He denies that Allah has anything like what the creature possesses in this respect; he does not deny what is unique to the Lord and whose counterpart he has not known, for he has not conceived of it so as to judge that it should be denied.

Thus, anyone who denies something never denies anything except what has a counterpart among the things he has perceived, for he has never known the negated thing itself at all. Pure negation cannot be known in itself: the mind does not encounter the nonexistent so as to perceive it. Rather, it encounters what exists and conceives a counterpart to it by analogy, then denies that counterpart of whatever is free of it. An example is its denying the existence of a mountain of ruby, a sea of mercury, and the like, after having known the sea, mercury, mountains and ruby, and then conceiving an object of knowledge composed of two things whose counterparts