known immediately. This they concede. If a general proposition can be known without the mediation of a syllogism, another can likewise be known in this way. For whether a proposition is self-evident or requires reasoning is not an inherent property of it that must be the same for everyone. Rather, it is relative and depends on people’s circumstances. For someone who knows it without proof, it is self-evident; for someone who needs reflection and inference, it requires reasoning. The same applies to all other matters. Thus, if some universal propositions are known without proof or syllogism, and the dividing line is not inherent in the propositions themselves but depends on people’s circumstances, one cannot say of something Zayd knows through a syllogism that no one else can know it without a syllogism. Such a denial is false.

The seventh argument:

It has already been shown that universal syllogistic reasoning can be recast as reasoning by analogy, and vice versa.

If it is asked, “How do you know that the shared feature entails the predicate?” the answer is: “By the same means through which we know the major premise in universal syllogistic reasoning.”

Thus, if someone says, “This is an agent who performs his work with precision, and everyone who performs his work with precision is knowledgeable,” whatever is cited as the ground for this universal proposition is also present in reasoning by analogy. The latter has the additional feature that there is a case serving as the basis of comparison, in which the predicate is found together with the shared feature. In universal syllogistic reasoning, however, none of the individual instances in which the predicate is established is mentioned.