and true statements from false ones. Whatever contradicts a true statement is false, and whatever contradicts the truth is erroneous. For this reason, Allah made the Scripture He revealed a judge between people concerning their disagreements. He also sent down the balance and that by which things are weighed and truth is distinguished from error. Every truth has a balance by which it is weighed. This is unlike what the philosopher-logicians devised: it cannot guide to the truth or distinguish truth from error, nor is it a balance by which truth can be distinguished from error. As for the speculative theologians, whatever in their discourse agrees with what the Prophets brought derives from it; whatever contradicts it belongs to the innovations that are invalid according to both revelation and reason.

If it is said:
“We regard demonstrative propositions as relative. Whatever a person knows through its premises is demonstrative for him, even if it is not demonstrative for someone else.”

The reply is:
“They have not done so. Anyone who followed this path would not find the material of demonstration confined to particular things, when many people may know other matters without those particular materials they have specified.”

If they say, “We do not specify the materials,” then one of the constituent parts of logic has been invalidated—which is precisely the point.

The thirteenth point:
When they supposed that their method was universal and encompassed all the ways by which human beings acquire knowledge—even though this is not the case, and people have acquired knowledge either through sense perception or