consistent distinction. Rather, this varies according to the strength and clarity of the intellect and the extent of its apprehension of the particulars through which universals are known. Every universal truth can be known without logical syllogism. It is therefore unjustifiable to judge any universal knowledge to depend on it.

This becomes clear through the fourth argument:

We say: Granted that the form and matter of logical syllogism yield universal knowledge, on what grounds is it known that universal knowledge is otherwise unattainable? How, then, can these pretentious men, who follow that of which they have no knowledge—along with their imitators among the adherents of religious communities and their scholars—declare: “Conceptions and judgments that are not self-evident can be known only through definition and syllogism”?

Lack of knowledge is not knowledge of absence. Whoever makes such a claim has not examined his own mental experience. Had he done so, he would have found that he possesses universal knowledge without logical syllogism and many conceptions without definition. Even if he knows this to be true of himself or his fellows, how can he know that all the children of Adam—with their differing natural dispositions, knowledge, and gifts bestowed upon them by the True One—are just like him, and that Allah grants no one knowledge except through a logical syllogism formed in his mind?

These men even claim that the prophets were likewise. Indeed, they have extended their claim to the Lord of all worlds, asserting that His knowledge of the affairs of His creation comes only through logical syllogism. Yet for this negation, concerning a matter they have not encompassed in knowledge, they have no proof other than a lack of