visible things—entities subsisting in themselves and attributes inhering in others—is either existence and its necessary consequences, or something else. Whatever is other than these is more specific than existence. Such a thing must entail nonexistence, whether it is said to be temporal origination or something else, such as certain necessary consequences of temporal origination. For if the common element is neither existence nor any of its necessary consequences whose absence entails the absence of existence, then it is more specific than existence: it must be a particular existence, such that the absence of this particular existence does not entail the absence of existence altogether.

For whatever is coextensive with existence or broader than it—such as being known or being mentioned—is such that its negation entails the negation of existence, and is among the necessary consequences of existence. Our discussion here concerns the second category: that which is neither existence nor any of its necessary consequences. We did not say: nor any of its inseparable concomitants.

This particular existence, which is assumed to be the cause of seeing, cannot be necessary necessity, since we have been discussing the seeing of observable created things. Nevertheless, if the cause of seeing were necessary existence, that would provide even stronger grounds for the possibility of seeing Allah Most High, for He, glory be to Him, is necessary existence. But that is not the case.