Chapter Eight — How Knowledge Is Acquired by the Human Being

We say: the human being, in the first of what comes to him of knowledge, is met by something simple, undifferentiated — so much so that he loves everything as one, nothing being distinguished for him from anything else. The proof of this is that multiplication comes to him only after the alerting, not by it — the distinguishing coming gradually; and this holds evenly across all things, since they are equal in this respect. And every gradation is preceded: he then attains the distinction between himself and another, then between things — and the first of all is the distinction between existence and non-existence. And he does not cease to distinguish and multiply, but with a difference between what he has already distinguished and had prepared beforehand, which he attains easily, and what is not so, which he attains with difficulty; and he pursues multiplication by nature, and by habit as well. From here the sciences and the objects of apprehension multiply with the passing of the ages and epochs — this on the one side.

On the other side, he takes to considering what comes to him of error in the matter of the notions by nature — as we explained in the Book of Considerations (Kitāb al-Iʿtibārāt). And consideration does not cease to beget consideration in the measure to which his own degree, and the degree of his age, has reached in the ascent of civilization and the compounding of life, since that was the cause of it; and this very meaning is what multiplies it, as was mentioned there.

Then know that with the real propositions — that is, those corresponding to existence — there is truth and falsehood among them, correspondence to fact (nafs al-amr) and its absence; the corresponding among them terminates in necessary, indeed primary, propositions; and the whole terminates in the first of firsts — namely, that affirmation and negation are not jointly true nor jointly false. The case is likewise with these posited propositions. Among them is what accords with the order and what does not accord with it; we call the first true and the second false. And every truth-by-another terminates in a truth-by-itself, until it terminates in the truth of truths — which, in this domain, is that the absolute truth (al-ḥaqq) is the necessity of the act. And we have already shown there that man’s acts issue only from the posited views, and that they issue only from an intention of necessity.

We say: every necessary-by-another (wājib bi-l-ghayr), since it terminates in a necessary-by-itself (wājib bi-l-dhāt) from every aspect, must have its orientation to the doing of something necessary — pursuing thereby the absolute necessary which is, from every aspect, necessary; and error is only in what one errs in, in the application. And we have shown in the Book of Fallacy that error has its existence by accident, and that every mistake is right in reality and mistaken by accident; so too is the discourse in the matter before us: all these acts, their false and their true, are true in reality, and the false is only false by accident — understand that. And know that the proposition «that the human being does not do other than the necessary truth» is a self-evident, natural proposition; and though most people deny it, save the rare among them, reflection yields it. And the demonstration also: since the human being does not, of necessity, remain devoid of acting, and every act is from some knowledge, and the known terminates in the truth, then every human being acknowledges the truth, by necessity and by nature.

Then there is here a truth in another sense: namely, that the matters that lie on the path of the soul’s perfection — more general than what leads to good or evil, to felicity or wretchedness — are ordered in a manifest ordering. So the utmost felicity branches upon matters that branch upon others, and so on, until it terminates in the absolute truth in which there is no dispute at all, by nature. And likewise complete wretchedness, with its premises and the premises of its premises, until it terminates in sheer falsehood — as has passed before. And you have learned that the whole, by another consideration, are things by accident (bi-l-dhāt wa-bi-l-ʿaraḍ). So the final truth, were it composed, and composed again, in a chain into which nothing of what is by accident enters, would lead to the utmost felicity; and that is why all its branches were named truths. And were it composed such that what is by accident entered it — or were sheer falsehood, which exists by accident, composed with its branches in an essential composition — it would lead to complete wretchedness.

Then we say: what necessitates the arising of the virtues and the vices, and of felicity and wretchedness, is this meaning of the true and the false. That is because we have shown that not every act issues from every knowledge, but a knowledge accompanied by assent — and that is knowledge in reality; and this is accomplished only by the soul’s turning to it. So were we to suppose a perfection, and a knowledge of it, and an assent accompanying it, until the knowledge becomes absolute, unrestricted, then the virtue would issue thereby and the settled disposition would become fixed. And were we to suppose a knowledge not accompanied by assent, then any issuing is accomplished only with the soul’s turning away from it to another — that is, to an assent to the vice by choice; and there, exertion is present. But if there is no knowledge, or there is and a heedlessness of its assent is supposed with it for some cause, then there is neither assent nor compliance, nor denial and obstinacy. And the first kind begets a felicitous settled disposition, the second a wretched settled disposition, and the third has nothing in it further, except that it is a deficiency for some causes.

So it has become clear that the human being who knows the truth and assents to it in all ranks is the perfectly happy one; and the human being who knows the truth, not assenting to it, likewise — in other than the absolute truth, since it has passed that this is not possible — is the perfectly wretched one; and his assent to the matter of the absolute truth is the proof against him. And the human being who does not know the truth, or knows it but does not assent for a non-voluntary cause, or knows the truth in some ranks, assenting to it, but not in some other, through a deficiency — he is neither happy nor wretched in what he is ignorant of and denies. His felicity is only in the measure of his knowledge of the truth and his assent to it; and for the individuals of the human being in this kind there are ranks and degrees without limit; and the measure in his felicity and his wretchedness is the one we have stated.