present and judging it as they judge their fellow-men. Even, they imagine to be irrational many questions which sound minds consider reasonable.

Note

Quite apart from existents from non-being, if one beholds from the point of view of perfect divine power the astonishing laws of the luminescence of the world's eye, which they call light and is the most obvious and luminous of works, as well as the astonishing laws of the eye's light, which is the former's fruit and a miniature sample of it, and if one compares them with matters that are imagined to be irrational and distant, they will appear more than familiar between the eyelashes of the mind's eye.

Note

Just as theoretical matters are deduced from necessary ones (zarûriyat), so too, the necessary matters of the Maker's works are proof of the hidden matters of His art. Both prove this question together.

Allusion

Can the mind conceive of anything finer, stranger, or more wondrous than the art in the world's order and anything further from the power of contingent beings? It surely cannot. For the sciences necessarily testify to the Maker's intention, art, and wisdom through the benefits and instances of wisdom they show, thus compelling the reason to accept them. If it had been left to the human intellect alone, it would not have accepted even the most minor of these self-evident matters.

Why should it be considered strange that what is infinitely easier and lighter be ascribed to the Most Pure and Holy One Who upholds the earth and skies and employs the cosmic bodies within the universal order and none of Whose commands are disobeyed? It is pure sophistry to doubt that one who lifts a mountain cannot lift an inkwell.

In Short: Just as parts of the Qur'an expound other parts, so some of the lines of the book of the universe expound the art and wisdom that lie beyond them.