First Discourse: The Self-Evident Propositions

You have learned from the introduction that knowledge is either (conception) or (judgment), and that each of these is either (primary) or (acquired). What we seek here is the acquired. Only, since it depends, as we said earlier, upon the primary cognitions (al-awwalīyāt), we had to put them first

The First Discourse

The Primary Cognitions

The primary conceptions: these are, as above, the single terms which the one addressed knows with full knowledge, so that they stand in need of no clarification or particularisation — such as book, hand, mouth, satiety, death, living, round, red,

And the primary assents: these are the judgments to which every rational man assents immediately upon conceiving them, judging them sound, his soul resting in them, and holding it certain that nothing will change his belief concerning them; nor does he hesitate to pronounce whoever contradicts them ignorant, to call him a liar, and to judge his intellect deficient

And such as they are, minds nonetheless differ in the quickness with which they conceive them. And among them are some that most people do not notice, so that they contradict them — though were they alerted they would come back to them, provided the intellect is sound. Let us set out for you examples of them:

1 — Two contraries do not come together. So it is not possible for a claim to be at one and the same time and in one and the same respect both true and false; nor is it possible for a thing to be existent and non-existent in a single instant

2 — It is permissible to predicate the general attribute of each individual falling under it taken singly, as in your judging of Saʻīd that he is a thinker because you know that man is a thinker. Only, before the judgment you must verify that the thing in question is one of the individuals, since things may be confounded on account of the fineness and obscurity of the difference between them. For instance, you know that cheese is wholesome; yet were you to see a piece of cheese, you would not judge it wholesome straightway until you had verified that the conditions of cheese are present in it. For among its conditions is that it be made in a vessel free of verdigris; otherwise it is a deadly poison. And likewise some kinds of honey are poisonous, on account of a substance present in the flowers from which the bees brought that honey; and so forth.

And there is no doubt that individuals are not parts. So although judgment is passed upon the individual by what is judged of the universal, one does not always judge of a part of a thing what is judged of the whole of it — as when we say that man is rational, yet we do not say that his hand is rational, or his foot. And we know that (sodium chloride, table salt) is fit to eat, yet we do not infer from that that (chlorine or sodium) is fit to eat. And the clarification of this is that in the first example we judged rationality of man; so everything to which it is proper for us to apply the word man, we judge to be rational, following upon our first judgment; and since the word man is not applied to a man's hand or his foot alone, it was not permissible for us to judge of them what we judged of him. And so it is with the matter of (chlorine): once it is separated by itself it is not called table salt, and therefore it is not permissible to judge of it what was judged of salt, by analogy and predication; rather it ought to be examined and tested. But were we to see a small piece of a fruit that is fit to eat, then we judge that it is fit to eat, because in its smallness it has not ceased to be of that fruit, and the name of the fruit may be applied to it without qualification. As if we saw a slice of an orange, we say: oranges are fit to eat, and this is an orange.

3 — If an attribute is confined to a genus, a species or a class, it must be denied of what is other than it. And that is as when we know that the genus of the horse neighs by nature, and after search and scrutiny we have found that this attribute is confined to this species and is not found in any other; so we then judge that the donkey does not neigh by nature, nor the camel, nor the bird. And likewise everyone who believes that none knows the unseen but God judges without hesitation that man does not know the unseen — neither the scholar, nor the Companion, nor the Prophet

4 — What is judged of some is not judged of all, nor of a determinate individual, unless it be verified that he is of that some. An example of this: were we told that history says most of the rulers of Miṣr were unjust, this judgment would not entitle us to say that every ruler of Miṣr was unjust, or to specify a person and say, for instance, Raʻmasīs the ruler was unjust — until we had verified, first, that he was among the rulers of Miṣr, and second, that he was of the number of the unjust

5 — No universal, general judgment is to be passed unless all the individuals have been surveyed by induction. For if you saw fifty Indians all of them learned, this would not entitle you to say that all the people of al-Hind are learned, unless you had examined them all; otherwise your induction was defective and your judgment void and to be rejected. And were you to see a Shāmī steal, do not judge that all the people of al-Shām are thieves; or a Turk lie, then do not judge that the Turks are liars. And like this, were you to find some fables in a book, do not say that the whole of that book is fables; or were you to verify that some of the Arab authors have muddled matters in their books, then do not judge that all the books of the Arabs are muddle and idle talk. And none does this but the feeble of intellect.

And for this reason no demonstration is accepted from one who infers the existence of the Creator (al-Bārī) by the indication of the effect upon that which effects it; for if he were asked how this is so, he would answer that he has seen the ship indicate a carpenter and the building an architect. But if he were told: have you surveyed by induction all existing things — among them this terrestrial globe and the planets — before this judgment of yours in your saying (every effect must have an effecter)? he would say, no! And the like of this is their saying, every originated thing must have an originator, and whatever resembles that. Nor is it hidden that clinging to proofs like these to establish the existence of the Creator is among the things that leave room for the objections of objectors and bequeath doubt in the hearts of the weak among believers; and for this reason the verifying scholars followed other paths, known to whoever has looked into their books. And in connection with this chapter I recall what is related: that a woman saw the Proof of Islam, the Imām al-Ghazzālī, may God be pleased with him, passing by, and behind him a great crowd of eminent scholars and his noble disciples; so she asked about him, and was told that this is the Imām al-Ghazzālī, who set up a thousand proofs for the existence of the Creator, exalted and mighty be His majesty. She said: by God, had he not had a thousand doubts he would not have set up a thousand proofs. (As though she meant that belief in the existence of the Creator is original, since it is innate in man, and that denial only supervenes upon the mind afterwards, so that it is a claim — and upon the claimant lies the evidence.)

6 — If two attributes or more happen to be present in a thing, or two or more propria among the propria happen to belong to it, they ought not to be taken as always coming together — that is, the existence of the remainder is not to be judged from the mere existence of one of them. An example of this: if we knew that iron is black and hard, we ought not to measure by it everything we found to be black and judge it to be hard

7 — Not everything deemed fine and familiar is true, nor everything deemed ugly and repugnant false. For there are many acts that the pleasantness of company, or shame, or delicacy of nature calls for, and a man deems it fine to perform them although he knows with full knowledge that they are neither true nor right. And such is the case with the customs, characters, conventions, doctrines and sects that a man has grown familiar with; for you see every party rejoicing in what it has, affirming what they believe, deeming fine what they do, rejecting whatever contradicts it and shrinking from it — for all that the truth is in one thing and its contrary is false, even if its own people deem it fine and are familiar with it

And likewise it is said (not every deed issuing from a good intention is good) — so much so that it has been said among the proverbs: an intelligent enemy is better than an ignorant friend. And the poet said:

He did what was fine, though it was not of his intent — so I accepted it, and coupled it with his sins And many a deed has come to me from a doer — so I praised it, and blamed the one who brings it

And another said:

Of enmity there is that whose benefit reaches you — and of friendship that which does not harm, and pains

And al-Maʻarrī said:

Do not thank the one who bestows a favour upon you — until he be deliberate in what he has bestowed on you

And the truthful Messenger, God's blessing be upon him and upon his family, said, in a noble tradition mentioned by our master the Imām ʻAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib, may God ennoble his face, in a sermon of his: (God loves the servant and detests his deed, and loves the deed and detests his body)

And likewise it is said: not everything beneficial is true, nor everything harmful false. For lying to children may benefit them in restraining them from what harms them, although it is false; and harm may be born of truthfulness, although it is true; and some false religions may benefit those who profess them in the refining of their characters, even though the proof of their falsity stands

And likewise it is said: not everything beneficial in one respect is beneficial in every respect, nor everything harmful in one respect harmful in every respect. As when we know that corrosive sublimate (al-sulaymānī) is a deadly poison: we do not say that it is harmful in every respect, since it is beneficial in the treatment of wounds and other things. And as if a Scripturary were to fall captive into the hands of Magians and claim that he was a Magian and escape by his lie, we do not say that lying is beneficial. And the sum of the matter is that deeming a thing fine is no demonstration

8 — The absence of one matter from a thing does not require the absence of another matter that has no connection with the first, nor its establishment — as when we are told, Khālid is not in Bayrūt. For this judgment does not entitle us to judge that he is likewise not in Ḥalab, nor to judge that he is in Baghdād; rather the place of his being remains unknown to us, and what we learn from this judgment is that he is in a town other than Bayrūt. And likewise, were we told, Ibrāhīm has no money, it does not follow from it that he has no intellect, nor that he is intelligent; nor do we judge that he has no knowledge, just as we do not judge that he is learned. And errors often arise in the like of this — as when we say to one of them, so-and-so does not know poetry, and he says: then he knows nothing

9 — Words and judgments between which there is no connection yield nothing but disjointed items of knowledge, and nothing results from them — such as: grapes, a gown, a camel. For between these words there is no connection, and they yield you nothing but single conceptions; and were you to put them together, nothing would result from them. And as in your saying, Arisṭū died in such a year, and the price of bread with us is two piastres: these two sentences yield you nothing but two items of knowledge, the one having no relation to the other, and it does not result from their sum that the watermelon is red or yellow, nor that the Russians were defeated in their war with Japan

And likewise in all matters and deeds. For were you to see a watch and beside it a cat, there is no doubt that you would not judge that the cat made it; or were you to see a camel in a caravanserai, there is no doubt that you would not judge that it was the camel that designed and built it. And the apprehension of this connection may be strange to the mind, so that many astonishing errors come about — especially if there is between the two matters a partial likeness that is not sufficient: as one who sees an airship (a balloon) and a bird and judges that the bird is pulling it, merely because both of them are flying; or one who sees a slaughtered murdered man and a donkey-driver with a rod in his hand and judges him to have slaughtered him, merely because the rod may be an instrument of killing. And stranger than this is the man who makes what is not a cause into a cause — as one who hears a raven croak and sees that a company of those he passed by have parted, and judges that the raven is the parter of loved ones. For if this man had set his thought to work and reflected a little he would have apprehended that the raven does not turn the helm of lifespans nor recite the book of appointed terms, and he would have known his error in his judgment and abandoned it, since there is no link between a raven's croak and the parting of loved ones, and it cannot be the cause of that. And how sweet is what the Arab poet Abū al-Shīṣ said:

Nothing has parted loved ones, after God — save the camels And people blame the raven of separation — because they were ignorant Nor is it upon the back of the raven of separation — that the saddle is bound Nor, when a raven cries out in the dwellings — do they set off And the raven of separation is nothing — but a she-camel or a camel

And all bird-augury and omen-taking, and their saying that such a day is ill-omened and such an hour auspicious, is all of this sort. And how excellent are the words of him who said:

A man does not know at night what the morning will bring him — save lies among what the omen (fāl) tells The omen, the augury from bird-cries (zajr) and the soothsayers, all of them — are misleaders, and before the unseen are locks

And al-Maʻarrī said in this same sense:

She set out early in her slipper and her wrap — to ask, yesterday, the blind astrologer And he has no knowledge to tell her of — nor is he of the people of shrewdness, that he might conjecture He says: tomorrow, or the day after, a steady rain will fall — which will be a relief if it comes on freely and pours down And he makes the ignorant of the quarter fancy that he remains — an interpreter of the secrets of the unseen Yet had they asked him about what is above his own breast — he would have brought out a lie, or else fallen dumb and mumbled As though a cloud had covered them all over with error — so that it will not clear away until the Day of Resurrection

And how much of that there is among the ignorant of the common folk and among the women! And how often we have heard that so-and-so cut down such a tree and his house burned down — and that tree becomes a saint among the saints, for all their believing that God has taken no saint out of firewood. And they have only fallen into absurdities of this kind through a weakness in their intellects that keeps them from apprehending the simple primary cognitions, and through what has taken root in their minds of what they learned in childhood from old women or from servants, or of what they have read of tales and stories. And you may hear one of them say that so-and-so was passing near such a wall while drunk, and a figure appeared to him that meant to strangle him, and he repented — so there must be the tomb of a saint or a prophet in that wall. Yet were you to say to him, I have heard that while in that state he went to the judge and bore witness against so-and-so to such and such, he would answer you that his testimony is not accepted, since he is not in his right mind — for all that he himself has accepted from him his testimony to the presence of the prophet in the wall

And a man once said to me: I asked my father, while he was in his death-agony, what do you say of what so-and-so said in his book? and he said, everything in it is true; and therefore I believe in its truth. So I said to him: consider — had your father, while in that state, bequeathed his money to someone, would you have acknowledged it? He said, no, because he was not in his right mind. So I said: then how did you accept his testimony to the truth of so-and-so and his book? And he was dumbfounded. And of the same strangeness is the saying of him who says: man walks and the bird flies, so God is powerful over everything. And upon my life, he is indeed a friend to religion — an ignorant one.

And the Imām al-Ghazzālī said in this same sense: were a speaker to say, four is more than ten, and I shall demonstrate that by turning this staff into a snake, and then he did it, I should be astonished at the operator's device, but I should remain in my certainty that four is less than ten. For there is no connection between the turning of the staff into a snake and four's being less than ten, and so this does not result from that

10 — The collapse of a proof and its unsoundness does not require the unsoundness of what is proved by it, nor does it establish its contrary. As, for instance, if one said (al-Qusṭanṭīnīyah is the capital of Turkey), and the proof of that is its being on the seashore: then the unsoundness of his proof, which is (every town lying on the seashore is a capital), does not require the unsoundness of his claim, which is that al-Qusṭanṭīnīyah is the capital of Turkey; nor does it establish that Mārdīn or Kīlān is the capital

So let this be noted, for the weakness of a proof awakens doubt and casts suspicion into the hearer's heart concerning the soundness of the claim demonstrated

With this, do not forget also that ignorance of the cause, or of the agent, or of the source, or of the authority, or ignorance of the thing itself, does not support the soundness of a claim: for none is seen more absurd than one who says, I am learned in medicine, and my proof of that is your ignorance of it; or one who sees a wall demolished and says to you, I prayed against it and it was demolished, and my proof of that is that you know no other cause for its collapse; or one who points to a distant thing and says, this is made of iron, and if you do not believe it, tell me of what it is made; or one who performs some strange feat and says, this is one of my miracles (karāmāt), and if you do not believe it, produce its like. For your ignorance of his craft and his skill does not support his claim

And on this same pattern is everyone who claims knowledge of the unseen, such as the charlatans, the diviners, the astrologers, the mind-readers and others. For they are men who have grown skilled in deceiving the senses and have taken it as their trade, and in it they have signs and contrivances and tricks and deftness and skill, by which they gain mastery over people's minds; and they are nothing but the practitioners of a craft, like the blacksmiths and the carpenters and others, and our ignorance of their craft does not support their claim — such as their pretence that they are in league with the Knower of all hidden things, and that it is He who inspires them with this knowledge by means of the angels or the devils, according to the compact between them and Him. For the soundness of this claim depends upon the standing of proof for a number of matters; and none are deceived by these miracles of theirs but the simple and the deranged. And among men there are those who attempt to explain those absurdities by long and broad technical paths, most of which are often mere patching-together and groundless derivation — for all that the cause may well be a very simple one, known only to the people of that craft or to whoever has learned their secret. And in any case our ignorance of it does not support their claim. Nor is it reasonable, either, to ascribe some proprium to an existent — that proprium being established for it by decisive, convincing demonstrations — in order to explain a matter that issued from it whose cause has not been apprehended.

11 — Not everything possible is actual; for we conceive a raven having four legs, and that is not impossible for us, and we see nothing to prevent it, yet we do not judge that it exists, because we have not verified that. And we see a person who resembles so-and-so the scholar, and we say of him, it is possible that this man is a scholar, yet we do not judge that he is learned so long as we have not verified it. And it is upon the like of this that the masters of physiognomy (firāsah) built their science, and therefore it ought not to be taken up except under the heading of the possible — that is, as opinion and guesswork, not as decision and certainty. And of this same sort: if it is said that God is able to create a camel that speaks Arabic and recites poems, this does not entitle us to judge that this has come about so long as we have not made sure of it

And among the natural primary cognitions are the outer sensibles, since it is not possible for us to doubt the existence of the various things falling under our senses, given the soundness of the senses — only, error may find its way into them through many accidents and causes. And among them too are the inner observations, such as a man's knowledge of his own hunger, and his fear, and his joy, and his gladness, and all his inner states.

And among what follows upon this kind as well are (the experientially tested, al-mujarrabāt), which are expressed also as the uniform course of customs — that is, the concomitance of causes and their effects. Only, the intellect needs, in assenting to that, the repetition of observation and the widely transmitted report (al-khabar al-mutawātir), which is a report about a sensible matter transmitted from a people so many in number that the intellect does not allow their agreeing upon a lie. And if the reporters report from eyewitness, being a single generation (ṭabaqah) only, then the matter is plain; and if the generations are several, the like of this multitude is required in every generation. And if one of the conditions of widespread transmission is defective — as that the report should be of something not sensible, or should be of something sensible but the reporters did not reach the number of widespread transmission in the first generation, or reached it but it was broken off in one of the generations after it — then the report is not called widely transmitted

And there is no way to confine the attaining of certainty to a determinate number; for the statement of one man stirs opinion, and the second and the third confirm it, and its confirmation goes on increasing with the increase of the reporters until it becomes necessary, such that we cannot make ourselves doubt it; and the strength of belief goes on increasing by a hidden increase until it turns into certainty without the soul's being aware of it

And the reports of histories and the science of geography are all of this sort

And the primary cognitions are many, beyond all number; every science has taken its share of them, which is studied before plunging into that science, and they are called the common notions, the primaries, or the axioms of that science. Upon them it rests and to them it returns in all its demonstrations and its proofs — as you have seen at the beginning of the books of geometry and others. And I have mentioned to you here the most important of what occurs in most conversations. And in daily disputes, that they may be attended to; for all fallacies have arisen only from the neglect of the evident things and laxity about them, or from being oblivious of them.

And estimation has powerful workings in leading us into error; and so too the technical conventions, and what we have received by way of guidance and upbringing from childhood, and what we have grown accustomed to through company and mixing with others. So whoever wishes to distinguish truth from falsehood ought to strip himself of all that before looking into the matter