An intimation on the contingent, containing a discussion of the composite, the absolute and the qualified

An Influx (wāridah)

Often enough the word “contingent” (mumkin) has struck your ear, and it is as though you had never grasped what it denotes; or they have adorned your ear with the statement that the contingent is that which stands in need of something other than itself in order to exist, or that whose existence does not preponderate over its non-existence save through a determinant (murajjiḥ), and other such synonymous formulas. Yet you do not know what lies outside this concept (mafhūm) — like one who hears the word “quiddity” (māhiyyah) and does not know of which individuals it is truly predicated, so that the ship of his thought is sunk in the sea of determination. So hear a few words on this, that you may come to know that the qualified (muqayyad) is an absolute essence to which a qualification (qayd) has been adjoined. The qualified, then, is a composite affair, made up of a qualification and an absolute essence qualified by that qualification. The qualification has a concept, and the qualified has a concept, and each of them has an extension (mā ṣadaq); and the composite too has a concept and an extension. And it is not sound that any one of them be one with another in concept or in extension — otherwise qualification itself would not hold; for by “qualification” we do not mean the description that is predicated, as “rational” is in “rational animal,” but rather the principle of that description, which they express sometimes as the root of derivation (mabdaʼ al-ishtiqāq) and sometimes as the subsisting attribute (al-waṣf al-qāʼim). Now if you consider the qualification itself and the absolute essence itself, you find each of them independent in its subsistence (thubūt) relative to the composite — that is, if you leave their composition out of account, you find that each has a subsistence in itself, in concept and in extension. But if you consider the whole composed of the two, which is what you call the qualified, with a consideration directed to its own essence, leaving out of account any part of the essence or of the qualification, then it has no subsistence in its own essence; for as soon as any part of the absolute essence or of its qualification is left out of account, the composite is annihilated, since a whole is annihilated by the annihilation of any of its parts. The composite, therefore, stands in need, for its realisation, of both the absolute and the qualified, and of the adjunction of each of them to the other; the composite is nothing but an expression of this. So its subsistence is nothing but the subsistence of each together with the composition. The qualified, then, has no independence in its own essence; rather, in being considered at all it rests upon both the essence and the qualification — indeed, the consideration of it is the very consideration of them both, which is not the case with either of them singly. Let us strike similitudes for you, that the discourse may not tarry (1) upon you. Look, then, at what lies before you: a house composed of four walls. Each wall, were it built without the adjunction of the remaining walls to it, would be subsistent in its own essence and existent. And so likewise the parts of which the wall is composed, such as the stones and the plaster: each of them, without being compounded with the other, is existent in its own essence and does not need to be compounded with the other. And so too the plaster and the stone in relation to the parts by which they subsist. Yet the house has no existence save through the four walls, nor the wall save through stone and plaster, for instance, nor the plaster without that which constitutes it. And when each of the parts exists adjoined to the other, that is the composite. So the composite is nothing but the parts together with a configuration of those parts that is merely a matter of consideration (hayʼah iʻtibāriyyah) — nay, the composite is nothing but this considered configuration; that is, it is one of the considerations of the parts, and their existence is its existence, though under the qualification of adjunction in a particular manner. Understand this. — And the like of this is said of intelligible things, such as the intellects and the souls; for these are essences adjoined to the principle of differentiation (mabdaʼ al-tamāyuz) between them and what is other than them. For if you consider essence taken absolutely, you find its subsistence in its own essence — that is, leaving out of account its being an intellect or a soul; and likewise the principle of differentiation: its subsistence in its own essence does not depend upon its belonging to an intellect or to a soul — that is, it may soundly be considered in itself relative to intellect and to soul. Not so the intellect or the soul: neither may soundly be considered as existing save through the existence of both the essence and the principle of distinction. Nor is it sound for you to say: the principle of distinction may be the absolute essence itself. For this contradicts qualification by a specific qualification, since the absolute does not of its own essence require any determinate qualification, all qualifications standing on a par relative to it; and so something must be adjoined to it for it to be distinguished by the specific differentiating factor. And that is evident.

You now know, then, that every qualified thing stands in need of the absolute and of the qualification, and so is non-existent in its own essence, so that its existence does not preponderate over its non-existence save through a determinant. And the absolute, in which there is no qualification in any respect whatever, is not contingent, since it does not require a bringer-into-existence — otherwise that would be a qualification of it. Thus every qualified thing is contingent, and every contingent thing is qualified, and nothing of the true absolute is contingent. So, you who are qualified by the qualification of uncritical imitation (taqlīd): put off your sandals, for you are in the holy valley; and come out of the murk of the darknesses of your ignorance, for the cleft of dawn has breathed.

— Notes —

[3] «1» His words yalbath: perhaps the correct reading is yaltabis.