and that everything that comes into being must have an originator. This is a universal proposition. Although it is self-evident and necessarily known, many Muʿtazilites argue for it through analogical reasoning, drawing an analogy with things made by human beings, such as houses and buildings.

Clearly, a person’s knowledge that everything that comes into being must have an originator encompasses the knowledge that this particular thing must have an originator, and that another particular thing must have an originator. Clearly, too, he perceives and understands these particular instances before he knows this general, universal proposition. The same applies in comparable cases: he knows that this particular human being senses things and experiences pleasure and pain before he knows that every human being senses things and experiences pleasure and pain. Knowledge of existing, perceptible things precedes the apprehension of a general, universal proposition.

Accordingly, when a person knows that a particular thing has come into being—whether it is something he witnesses coming into being or something whose coming into being he knows through evidence or inference—his knowledge that it must have an originator does not require him first to know that everything that comes into being must have an originator. Thus, knowledge of the originator does not require this universal proposition