and what is perceived directly is what a person perceives through his outward or inward senses. This is clear.

As for the second category, they agree that some things beyond a person’s sensory perception are known to him through analogy and inference from what he has observed. Thus he knows about individual humans, animals, grains, fruits, foods, drinks, garments, and similar things that he has not perceived.

For, in the case of what jurists and others call a single genus, or what has a common name encompassing kinds distinguished by their attributes—such as wheat, fruit, humans, and horses, which logicians call a species—and more specific categories, even though these too may be called a genus, class, or species—such as Arabs, Hebrews, Persians, and Romans, or Barnī and Ma‘qilī dates and the like—there is no doubt that a person has not perceived all their individual instances. Rather, he knows those he has not observed by analogy with those he has observed. This is a principle upon which rational people agree.

As for those speculative theologians who report that among the nations there is one that acknowledges nothing known through reason, acknowledging only what it has perceived through the senses—and they attribute this to