—existence or nonexistence—necessarily pertains to an originated thing. Rather, after it comes into being, it can only be existent, and before its existence, it was only nonexistent. If the intended meaning is that one of the two alternatives necessarily pertains to the essence, the reply is that either existence or nonexistence necessarily pertains to it. The necessary entailment of one of two alternatives, one being existence and the other nonexistence, is not something positive. This differs from the necessary entailment of one of two positive attributes—spatial separation and co-location—for the necessary entailment of either of these is something positive.

Fifth, the correct position, agreed upon by Ahl al-Sunnah and rational people generally, is that nonexistence is not a thing in external reality; it exists only in knowledge. Accordingly, an originated thing is at times a thing and at times not a thing. Its being a thing and its not being a thing therefore cannot be the cause of its being co-located or spatially separate, for these two attributes apply only to what is a thing. What is a thing cannot be the cause of that which entails its not being a thing in one of its two states, nor can it be the cause of the division of its two states into being a thing at one time and not a thing at another.

As for his objection to the statement that ignorance of the cause entails ignorance of the effect, countering it with the assertion that knowledge of the cause entails knowledge of the effect, there are two replies.

The first is to concede this implication. Everyone of sound innate disposition who has not adopted a doctrine that obstructs them and alters their innate disposition knows, upon knowing that a thing exists, that it must either be co-located with something else or spatially separate from it, just as they know