Even the least of the messengers’ followers, once he understands the true nature of their teachings, finds them unacceptable even to the least of those followers. When he knows through rational proofs that nothing in this world can be beginningless, and knows through the prophets’ reports, supported by reason, that another world preceded it, from which it was created, and that it will undergo transformation and the Resurrection will take place, and other such matters, he realizes that even their most far-reaching universal judgments do not correspond to reality: they are ignorance, not knowledge.

Even supposing that they do not know what the messengers conveyed, reason does not establish their claim that these universal kinds in this world are beginningless and everlasting, having always existed and continuing forever. Thus, purported knowledge of this is not knowledge of unchanging universals. Most of their “first philosophy” and “higher wisdom” is of this sort.

The same applies to those who wrote according to their method, such as the author of “Eastern Investigations,” the author of “The Wisdom of Illumination,” the author of “The Subtleties of Realities” and “Symbols of Treasures,” the author of “Unveiling the Realities,” and the author of “Hidden Secrets in the Rational Sciences,” and others like them. These writers neither devoted their discourse wholly to defending the philosophers’ doctrine nor escaped altogether from the entanglements of their error. Rather, they shared much of their error and many of their absurdities, while escaping some of their harmful consequences. Yet they also failed to do them justice in some matters in which they were correct, and erred either because they did not understand what they meant or because they did not recognize that what they said was correct.

These writers, moreover, merely follow the teachings of Ibn Sīnā. Ibn Sīnā discussed matters concerning theology, prophethood, the Hereafter, and revealed laws that his predecessors had not discussed, that their intellects had not reached, and that their knowledge had not encompassed, for he learned them from