The followers of the messengers, by contrast, possess knowledge, guidance, righteousness, and goodness in their beliefs and deeds. It is thus clear that command and affirmation predominate in what the messengers brought, whereas prohibition and negation predominate in the way of the disbelieving negationists and their like. This is among the clearest proofs of the superiority of command and affirmation over prohibition and negation.

The twenty-first point:

Negation and prohibition cannot stand independently; they must be preceded by something affirmed and a command. Command and affirmation, by contrast, can stand independently. This is because a person cannot conceive of the nonexistent from the outset, nor direct his intention toward it from the outset. I have established this earlier and explained that a person can conceive of the nonexistent only through conceiving of what exists. If he cannot conceive of it, then he is even less able to intend it, for intention and will are preceded by awareness and conception.

This dependence is more pronounced in intention and will than in awareness and knowledge. A person can conceive of both the existent and the nonexistent and make statements about them. As for willing the nonexistent, this is not conceivable in every respect. Rather, willing a thing’s nonexistence consists in hating and disliking it. A person either wills a thing’s existence, wills its nonexistence, or wills neither its existence nor its nonexistence. The first is the fundamental form of will and love.

As for the second—willing its nonexistence—it consists in hating and disliking it, which is preceded by conceiving of what is hated and disliked. Thus, hatred and dislike of a thing, which entail refraining from it—the aim of the one issuing the prohibition and what is required of the person addressed by it—are derivative in two respects: