When the questioner asks, “What is the wine that is forbidden?” and the respondent replies, “It is that which intoxicates,” the logicians consider this a single conception—namely, a conception of what the word “wine” denotes. In truth, however, it is an assent composed of a subject and a predicate. If one then adds, “Every intoxicant is wine, and every wine is unlawful,” this constitutes a syllogism. It produces the assent that the intoxicant is unlawful and also shows that the intoxicant falls under the name “wine.” Should one wish to present a definition that is both exhaustive and exclusive, he would say, “The intoxicant is wine, and every wine is unlawful.” Such a syllogism yields a precise conception of the meaning of wine.

The reason is that everything expressed by way of definition or syllogism is, in fact, a complete proposition—what grammarians call a sentence. Likewise, the answer to a question about conception or about assent comes in the form of a complete declarative proposition. In both the question and the answer we find a compound statement in which an attribute is affirmed of a subject—such as ascribing “wineness” to the intoxicant, which is simply the predication of a predicate to a subject. In both cases the person has conceived that the intoxicant is wine and has also assented to that fact.

As for the simple conception that can be expressed only by an isolated term, one neither asks about it with a single word nor answers it with a single word, unless some explanatory detail is supplied that can be cast into the form of a sentence.

This has been discussed at length elsewhere—such as in the commentary on the Muḥaṣṣal—where it is demonstrated that the claim that knowledge is divided into conception and assent, and that conception is a bare notion stripped of all affirmative and negative qualifications, is untenable. Whatever is devoid of every affirmative and negative qualification is merely a passing thought; it is not knowledge of anything whatsoever. When something crosses a person’s mind without any attribute—affirmative or negative—also occurring to him, he has not acquired knowledge.

So when one says, “Man is an animal,” or “The world is created,” he has conceived of man and knows that he exists; he has not formed a naked conception devoid of affirmation and negation. Rather, he has conceived of existence and other attributes as well. The same is true of the world: he has conceived of its existence. And when he pictures a sea of mercury or a mountain of ruby, if he does not at the same time conceive of its non-existence in external reality