…be knowledge at all; it would only be something that a number of people happened to endorse. We know that many people profess the soundness of logic, but what benefit lies in such a profession?
Third, even if we were to grant you this very division, the proof that rests on it would still be faulty, as will be shown, and its faultiness is itself evidence that the division’s very foundation is corrupt. When the basis of a division is unsound, the argument erected upon it is null, and the division itself collapses—precisely the conclusion we seek.

The third route of refutation is to say: Your statement, “Once we apprehend the essence, we must also apprehend that, qua essence, it necessitates the consequent,” is inadmissible. Expressions such as “we apprehended the essence,” “we conceived the essence,” and the like are equivocal. Sometimes they refer to a complete conception and perfect understanding that already includes conceiving the conditioned element (the malzūm); at other times they mean only that we have grasped the thing with a certain, partial kind of cognition, short of perfection—and such an incomplete grasp certainly does not entail conceiving what follows from it. Hence your claim that every cognition of an essence obliges us to know that, by virtue of its very quiddity, it necessitates its consequent is unfounded and contradicts plain fact: people regularly apprehend certain essences in a limited way, yet do not perceive that, simply by being what they are, those essences require the consequent.
In sum, for our present purpose it suffices merely to deny the claim, for it is not self-evident, and no proof has been advanced for it save the assertion, “Otherwise we would not have apprehended the essence as such.” If by the alleged necessity you mean perfect cognition—that is, complete conception—we concede that point and reply that not everyone who forms some notion of an essence thereby grasps it with full and perfect understanding. But if you mean that, without this consequence, we would have acquired no cognition or conception at all, such a claim is untenable.

The fourth route is to say: What he has posited entails that no simple, singular object could ever be apprehended on its own; rather, whoever apprehends a thing must also apprehend its immediate concomitant, so that he would end up apprehending two things, conceiving two things, and never apprehending or conceiving one alone. This contradicts what they themselves claim about…