in its complete form. Although nonexistence may appear to be part of the complete cause, it must entail something existent. Otherwise, nonexistence cannot in any way cause existence or genuinely form part of a cause.

That being so, the cause of seeing—which is itself something existent—cannot be something that entails nonexistence or susceptibility to nonexistence. Otherwise, nonexistence or susceptibility to it would form part of the cause of something existent, which is untenable. If it is said that nonexistence or susceptibility to it causes something existent only because it entails something existent, then it is that existence which truly forms part of the cause. Thus, the cause of seeing can only be existence or its necessary concomitants, not something that entails nonexistence or susceptibility to it.

Since the cause cannot be something that entails nonexistence or susceptibility to it, the cause of seeing cannot be temporal origination, anything peculiar to all or some temporally originated things, contingency, or any attribute peculiar to all or some contingent beings. Rather, it must be something common to the eternal and the temporally originated, to the necessarily existent and the contingently existent. Indeed, the Eternal and Necessarily Existent must have a greater claim to it. If it is existence itself, this is evident. If it is one of the necessary concomitants of existence, then whenever that attribute is absent, existence is absent; thus, it is established only where existence is established. It is known that existence and all its necessary concomitants are common to the necessarily existent and the contingently existent, the eternal and the temporally originated. Accordingly, it is established that the cause of seeing is something that holds true of Allah Most High, the Eternal, the Necessary