the scholars—[and the approach of the general public].

The two kinds of knowledge differ only in their degree of detail. By this I mean that, in their knowledge of providence and creation, the general public confine themselves to what is apprehended through elementary knowledge based on sense perception. Scholars, however, supplement what they describe of these matters through sense perception with what they apprehend through demonstration—that is, concerning providence and creation. Some scholars have even said:

“The beneficial functions of human and animal organs that scholars have come to know number close to a thousand.”

If this is so, then this approach is both the revealed and the natural approach: it is what the messengers brought and what the Scriptures revealed. Scholars surpass the general public in these two forms of reasoning not merely in the amount they know, but also in the depth of their understanding of each individual thing. For the general public’s consideration of existing things is like their consideration of manufactured objects whose manufacture they do not understand: all they know about them is that they are manufactured and that their maker exists. Scholars, by contrast, are like someone who examines