The First Article (the Element of Reality) — The Second Premise — Rational Arguments

The Second Premise

Something that in the past was theoretical may in the future be self‑evident.

It has been as follows: present in the world is an inclination towards perfection due to which creation is dependent on the law of evolution (tekâmül). Humanity, too, inclines towards perfection and desires progress since it is one of the world’s fruits and parts. This desire grows and develops through the meeting of minds and accumulation of ideas, and the accumulation of ideas expands through basic principles being perfected. Basic principles being perfected fertilises the seeds of the physical sciences by sowing them in the ground from the loins of creation cultivated by the times. As for the seeds, they sprout and grow through gradual experimentation.

In consequence, there are numerous questions that are now obvious and have become common knowledge, but in the past were completely theoretical and hidden and in need of proof.

For we see that thanks to the perfecting of principles and means and the discoveries of combined minds, many matters of geography, astronomy, chemistry and applied geometry are not unknown even to the children of today; they play with them like toys, but to Ibn Sina and his likes they were theoretical and hidden.

Ibn Sina was like the father of science, and in respect of his acute intelligence, powerful thought, mature wisdom, and breadth of imaginative power, would prove far superior if compared with even hundreds of today’s sages. He was not lacking anything, for he was a son of his times; he was made deficient by the deficiency of the times.

Isn’t it clear that if the discovery of the New World, which was the reason for the learned Columbus’ fame, had remained to today, any caique owner, the least worthy of sea captains, would have been capable of making the New World the neighbour of the Old. A small boat and a compass would have been sufficient substitute for the wide knowledge and braving of hazards of the earlier explorer.

Attention should also be paid to the following truth. The matters are of two sorts:

The meeting of minds is influential On the First; indeed, it is dependent on it; just as co‑operation is necessary to lift a large physical stone.

But In the Second Sort, co‑operation and combining ideas are essentially without effect. One and a thousand are equal. Just like jumping over a chasm or passing through a narrow defile; the whole and a part are the same. Co-operation is profitless.

According to this analogy, some of the sciences (fünun) are in need of co‑operation, like when lifting a large boulder. These are mostly the physical sciences (ulûm‑u mâddiye).

The other sort resemble the second example; they are perfected instantaneously, or so it seems. They are mostly sciences dealing with ethics or metaphysics (mâneviyat) or theology. The accumulation of ideas does not alter, perfect, or augment them, but it does clarify, disclose, and strengthen their methods of proof.

It should also be noted that if a person becomes deeply involved in something, it usually makes him slow in other things. It is because of this that the person who becomes absorbed in materiality grows ignorant of spiritual and non‑material matters and his knowledge is superficial. Hence, just as the pronouncement concerning moral and spiritual matters of someone proficient in material ones will not be authoritative, so most of the things he says about them will not be worth listening to.

For sure, if, drawing an analogy between medicine and engineering, an invalid were to consult an engineer instead of the doctor and take the medicine he prescribed, it would mean inviting his relatives to his wake and asking for a report ordering his transfer to the hospital of the graveyard.

Similarly, to consult the ideas of the materialists concerning spiritual matters, which are sheer truths and totally abstract, is quite simply to announce the arrest of the heart, a subtle dominical faculty, and the death of the mind, a luminous substance.