as maintained by Ibn Hazm and others. The majority of scholars, however, hold that the term applies literally to both, and that rational inference encompasses them both. This is the position of most who have written on the foundations of religion, legal theory, and the various rational sciences. It is the correct view, for the essential nature of the two is the same; only the form of inference differs.

In its linguistic sense, “qiyās” means measuring one thing against another. This includes measuring a particular thing against another particular like it, and measuring it against a universal that encompasses both it and others like it. For a universal is a mental representation of its particulars; hence it corresponds to and agrees with the particular.

“Syllogistic reasoning” is the mind’s passage from a particular to the general, shared universal concept encompassing both it and other particulars, and its judging that particular according to what necessarily follows from the shared universal. It does so by passing from that necessarily entailed universal back to the original particular that entails it. Thus, it is a passage from the specific to the general, then from that general back to the specific: from a particular to a universal, then from that universal back to the original particular, of which that universal is then predicated.

For this reason, the evidence is more specific than what it establishes, namely the judgment. The existence of the evidence necessarily entails the existence of the judgment, and what is entailed cannot be more specific than what entails it. Rather, it must be either more general or coextensive with it. This is what is meant by its being more general.