As for their assumption that later practitioners of every discipline are more proficient than their predecessors because they have perfected it, this is refuted, first, by the fact that it does not hold universally. No work on Arabic comparable to Sībawayh’s book has been composed since; nor has anything more complete than Ptolemy’s book—or, indeed, the writings of Hippocrates—been composed after them.

Furthermore, we say that this may be conceded in disciplines acquired through reasoning by analogy, considered judgment, and ingenuity. But as for virtues connected with following the prophets, the closer a person is to the prophets, provided his natural disposition is sound, the more fully he receives from them. The excellence he possesses consists of religious virtues learned from the prophets. Thus, whoever opposes this belongs to the innovators who depart from the ways of the prophets, believing that they possess a share of knowledge and spiritual states beyond the prophets’ sphere. The greater a person’s appreciation of prophethood and its stature, the more firmly grounded he is in this matter.

As for spiritual experiences and saintly miracles, some are false; those that are genuine were undoubtedly more complete and excellent among the early generations. A departure from the ordinary course of events sometimes occurs because a servant needs it, while someone superior to him may experience no such departure. For such an occurrence has both a cause and an intended end: a person of spiritual perfection may have risen beyond that cause, or may have no need of the end intended by it. Moreover, the later generations have no saintly miracle without the early generations having had something of the same kind that was more complete.