The matter is not as they imagine. What is required is simply whatever makes the desired conclusion known—whether that be one premise, two, or three. What slips from one’s mind is not knowledge while it is forgotten; once recalled, it again becomes actual knowledge. In the mule illustration, the proof lies in knowing that a mule does not conceive. That premise had escaped him, so he lacked the awareness by which inference is drawn, for a forgotten notion does not serve as evidence while it is forgotten; it does so only when it is present, because then it is a live, operative piece of knowledge.
The Lord—exalted be He—is utterly transcendent above heedlessness and forgetfulness, for these negate true knowledge, just as He is exalted above drowsiness and sleep, which contradict the perfection of life and His sustaining care. Sleep is the brother of death; therefore the inhabitants of Paradise will neither sleep nor die, and they will be inspired to glorify Allah as naturally as we draw breath.
The point here is that the force of a proof lies in one’s awareness of the necessary link between a sign and what it signifies—call that recollection, alertness, or anything else. Whenever a person brings to mind that necessary connection, he knows the sign indicates what is signified. If the necessity is self-evident to him, so be it; otherwise, clarifying it may require one premise, two, three, or even more.
Middle terms vary with people. A term that suffices to entail the ruling for one person need not be the term that suffices for another; he may attain the ruling by way of a different middle term altogether. These middle terms are the evidence—the intermediary in knowledge between the predicate and the subject, between that which is affirmed and that of which it is affirmed, for the judgment remains bound to its subject so long as it is a judgment about it. Such intermediaries, which are the proofs, differ and multiply according to the avenues of guidance Allah opens for His servants. When the middle term is truthful testimony, the report that convinces one listener may differ from the report that convinces another.
If people sight the new crescent, the sighting is confirmed at the ruler’s court, and the witnesses disperse and broadcast the news throughout the town, each group attains sure knowledge through the report of someone other than the one who informed the next group. In the same way, the Qur’an and the Sunnah that the people received from the Messenger reached each community through different intermediaries.