temporal origination, it would not be possible to know their dependence upon Him until this cause was known, since, according to them, this is the only evidence of their need for an efficient cause.

Thus, knowledge of the dependent entities themselves and of actual beings whose need is inescapable necessarily entails knowledge of their need for their Creator and their dependence upon Him. This is why Allah calls them signs.

There are therefore two stages in this argument:

The first is that they depend upon an efficient cause that necessitates their existence or brings them into being, on account of these two causes.

The second is that anything dependent upon an efficient cause—whether one that necessitates its existence or brings it into being—cannot do without it. This statement is correct in itself, but the path to the conclusion does not require it; it introduces length and obstacles that make the intended conclusion more remote.

As for the first stage, knowledge of their dependence does not require evidence drawn from contingency or temporal origination.

As for the second, their dependence upon Him does not need to be established through a universal syllogism stating that every contingent being must have a cause that necessitates its existence, and that everything brought into being must have something that brings it into being. For they are signs of Him: it is impossible for them to exist without Him or not to be signs of Him. The heart knows this by its innate disposition, even if the attributes of contingency and temporal origination never occur to it.

The essential point is that the heart need not consider contingency and temporal origination, either to know the dependence of these entities themselves or to know that they are signs of their Creator, even though both attributes are established. Both also constitute sound evidence. Yet the individual contingent beings are signs pointing specifically to their Creator Himself, whose like there is nothing, in such a way that no other can share in what they indicate.