and rough. In the same way, it distinguishes between what it finds pleasurable and what causes pain, and so on.

The point, then, is that they treat experiential knowledge and mutawātir (concurrently transmitted) reports as though they belonged only to those who personally encountered them, and therefore cannot be cited as proof against anyone else. Yet, just as with the purely sensory data, these matters may involve both exclusivity and commonality.

Commonality itself may pertain either to the very same particular object perceived or merely to its general kind. The first case resembles people jointly observing the sun, the moon, and the like; the second is like their shared awareness of hunger and thirst, satiation and quenching, pleasure and pain.

The specific morsel tasted by one individual is not the identical morsel tasted by another—each person tastes what is in his own mouth—yet all agree regarding the genus of the experience.

Similarly, what they call thunder and what they behold as lightning are perceived by the inhabitants of a given locale as one concrete instance, whereas humanity at large shares only in perceiving the type; the thunder and lightning that occur at one time and place are different from those that occur at another.

There are, moreover, many visible sensibles—varieties of animals, plants, and the like—that exist in certain lands but not in others. They are well-known and plainly seen by those who encounter them, while the rest of mankind learns of them only through report—and at times those who share in the report outnumber those who share in the direct sight.

It thus becomes clear that sensory, mutawātir, and experiential matters may be either common or exclusive; consequently, it is meaningless to claim that some of them may serve as proof against an opponent whereas others may not.

Rejecting matters established by tawātur is one of the cornerstones of atheism and unbelief. Indeed, this very distinction—despite its manifest falsity—constitutes one of the roots of atheism and disbelief, for that which has been conveyed from the prophets through continuous, concurrent transmission, whether in the form of miracles or otherwise, one of these people will say