These things created from water and clay are not like the forms that human beings fashion from materials while the material itself remains: shaping silver into a ring, a dirham, and the like; wood into a bed, a door, and the like; or yarn into cloth. In these cases, no new entities come into existence; only the attributes of an existing entity change. As for the animals and plants we observe, we have witnessed these very entities coming into existence and being created. Yet they were created from something else, neither of their kind nor of their essential nature. This is among the most wondrous and momentous things.

Thus, that from which these things were created—even if some people call it matter—is not like familiar materials, which themselves remain within the forms fashioned from them or are of the same kind as those forms. Accordingly, we have witnessed these existing realities and their attributes being brought into being after they did not exist. As Allah Most High says:

“Does man not remember that We created him before, when he was nothing {67}?” [Maryam 67]

The most that can be said in this regard is that we have witnessed them being created from something neither of their kind nor of their essential nature. We have witnessed them being created from the lowliest and most insignificant things, those furthest removed from attributes of perfection—as with the creation of man from dust. As the poet said:

The one who has bewildered all creation
Is a living being newly brought forth from lifeless matter.