throne of His almightiness"(20:5). Since they perceive things in this way, guidance and eloquence require that their feelings are taken into account and respected and that allowance is made for their understanding. Such respect and allowance for human understanding is called 'divine condescension.' The purpose of this condescension is to familiarise and get the people to understand. You may refer to the Tenth Premise.

By reason of the above, the depictions in the allegorical verses have been put as telescopes to flatter the feelings of the mass of people with their fanciful views so that they may look on the abstract truths. This answer is corroborated by the fact that numerous metaphors are utilised in speech generally in order to conceptualise or depict profound or various meanings in a simple and straightforward way. That is to say, the allegorical verses are the most abstruse of metaphors. For they are the parabolic forms of hidden truths. This means that the abstruseness is due not to the incomprehensibility of the words, but to the subtlety of the meanings.

You who objects! Consider this fairly: is it not in conformity with eloquence, which is to speak suitably to any situation and clearly in any context, to bring close to the people's understanding in this way those truths which are furthest from them, or is it as you imagine it to be? You judge for yourself!

Answer to the Second Point: This was discussed in detail in the Second Premise. The sciences are successive and sequential, for they are the fruits of man's inclination to progress — a branch of the desire in the world to be perfected — and are like the steps of the ladder of progress formed through numerous experiments and the products of the meeting of minds. The formation of the succeeding one is dependent on the forming of the previous one. That is, the science which is previous becomes established as axiomatic, then it may be preliminary to one that succeeds it. It is because of this that supposing a man had tried ten centuries ago to teach a science which had come into being through the refinement of experiments, he would have done nothing but cause confusion and error. For instance, if he had said: "Behold the stationary sun and rotating earth and the swarming millions of living organisms in a droplet of