mands he gives through a universal law in the form of visible officials and commanders in accordance with their abilities and ranks.
The Second Kind: This is not through universal laws. He does not make visible officials a veil; his execution of affairs and royal favours are direct and may be described as more elevated and excellent.
In the same way, the Creator of the universe, the Monarch of Pre-Eternity and Post-Eternity, has made numerous causes and intermediaries veils to His execution of affairs and has demonstrated the majesty of His dominicality. But He left private telephones in His servants’ hearts so that they might leave causes behind and turn directly to Him, and might declare: “You alone do we worship and You alone do we ask for help!”(1:5)
Thus, the meanings of “The Best of Creators,” “Most Compassionate of the Compassionate,” and, “God is Most Great” [^17] look to this meaning, too.
[^17]:Abū Ḥanīfa, al-Musnad, 148; Abū Yūsuf, Kitāb al-Āthār, 18; al-Shāfī‘ī, al-Sunan al-Ma’thūra, 290; Ibn Abī Shayba, al-Muṣannaf, vi, 75; al-Ṭabarānī, Mu‘jam al-Awṣat, v, 28.
We shall answer the second part of the representative’s question with five signs.
#### The First Sign
The First Sign: In his question, he said: “If something has no opposite, how can it be perfection?”
The Answer: The questioner does not know what true perfection is. What he has in mind is only relative perfection. For merits, virtues, and qualities that look to something and are acquired relatively to something else are not real, they are relative and weak. If what they look to disappears, then they too will disappear.
For example, the relative pleasure and merits of heat occur through the effect of cold, and the relative pleasure of food, through the effect of the pain of hunger. If the cold and hunger disappear, then the pleasure diminishes. Whereas true pleasure, love, perfection, and virtue are such that they are not constructed on imagining something else. They are present of themselves. They are essential, inherent truths.
Qualities such as the following are like this: the pleasures of existence, life, love, knowledge, mercy, and compassion; and the beauty of light, sight, speech, noble-heartedness, fine character, and form; the perfection of essence and of attribute and perfection in actions. Whether or not there is something else, these qualities will not change. Thus, all the perfections of the Glorious Fashioner, the Beauteous Maker, the Perfect Creator are true perfections; they are essential and what is other than Him cannot affect Him. They can only be recipients.