to address the common people in images their minds could grasp, so that they might profit from the just order the Messengers had established for them.

Then some of them say, “The Messengers knew what we know—namely, the negation of all these things.” Others maintain, “No, the Messengers did not know this at all; their perfection lay in the practical faculty, not in speculative insight.” Yet the humblest follower of the Messengers—were he to perceive the reality of what these people advance—would find it wholly unacceptable, unworthy of even the least of the Messengers’ disciples.

When rational proofs show that nothing in this universe can possibly be primordial and eternal, and when the prophetic reports—confirmed by reason—state that another world existed before this one, that this world was created from it, that it will perish, and that the Resurrection will ensue, it becomes evident that the furthest reach of their universal judgments does not correspond to reality at all; it is ignorance, not knowledge.

Grant, for the sake of argument, that they were unaware of what the Messengers have reported: even then, reason provides no basis for their claim that the universal kinds found in this world are everlasting, without beginning or end. Knowledge of that sort is not knowledge of established universals. Their “first philosophy” and their “highest wisdom” are of precisely this kind.

The same must be said of everyone who wrote in their vein—such as the author of The Eastern Investigations, the author of The Philosophy of Illumination, the author of The Subtleties of Realities and The Ciphers of Treasures, and the author of