As for what is indicated in the sense of the subject of the judgment—the thing judged, spoken of, described, or taken as the subject—it is either narrower in scope than the evidence or coextensive with it. It may thus be described as narrower than the evidence; it cannot be broader. For if it were broader, and the evidence did not necessarily follow from it, the judgment could not be known to apply to it, and the evidence would not constitute evidence. It constitutes evidence only when it necessarily follows from the thing judged, described, and spoken of—called the subject or grammatical subject—and itself entails the judgment, which is an attribute, a statement about the subject, and a judgment, and is called the predicate or grammatical predicate.

An example is intoxication, which is broader in scope than the disputed drink, nabīdh, but narrower than prohibition. The evidence may also be coextensive with the judgment while necessarily following from the subject of that judgment. This, then, is what gives it its evidentiary force, whether it is formulated as syllogistic or analogical reasoning or is not formulated in either way. This is something the mind understands even when the tongue does not express it. Hence human minds infer conclusions from evidence even when people do not express this in words that explain what is in their minds. They may also express their meanings clearly without adopting the terminology of any particular group of speculative theologians, logicians, or others. Knowledge of that which entails the conclusion must therefore be self-evident or established by further evidence.

As for “analogical reasoning,” it is the mind’s passage from one particular judgment to another because they share a common universal attribute, for that judgment necessarily follows from the shared universal. If this necessary connection is not self-evident, knowledge of it must have some basis, as explained earlier. The mind first conceives of the two particulars—the original case and the new case—and then proceeds to what both entail