ABSTRACT
The traditional view holds that all blackness is one, and that all men are one with respect to humanity. Consequently, people imagine (ṣūrat uftad) that there is possibly a being external (hast-ī bīrūn) to man's soul (nafs-i mardum), such as humanity or blackness, which subsists in reality in an identical manner in countless things. For example, there is a school (qaumī) which believes that a single soul (yakī nafs) exists in an identical manner in Zaid and Amr, as one father may have many sons, or as the sun may shine in many cities. This opinion (gumān) is not true but false. 1 Such a universality which is supposed to be a single idea (yakī ma‘nā) and analogous to many others does not exist, of course, except in the imagination (wahm) and in man's thought. 2 Upon seeing the body of a man (i.e. an instance of a man) for the first time, one tends to think that the latter has the form of humanity due to the single humanity; one tends to think also that this form, which is in the single man, is united (paiwand) with the one universal form and with all other instances of the forms (ṣūra) of humanity external to man. 3 It is necessary for one man who is the effect of another man to have the same form as his cause. If he comes from one man and has the form of humanity, he cannot accidentally have another form. For instance, it cannot be the case that something which comes from Zaid is not Amr (i.e. another man having the form of humanity) but a lion having a form other (than humanity). Similarly, if there are many rings bearing the same insignia, the impression one makes upon a place is the same as that any other would have made. But, an identical humanity (mardumī) or an identical form of blackness cannot be external to the soul, the imagination (wahm)), or to thought (andisha). The existence of the form of humanity cannot be limited to any thing (andar bar chizi) or to any member of the class of men. Similarly, the existence of the form of blackness cannot be restricted to black men nor to instances of black entities. The identical form of man-qua-man cannot be a knower like Plato and also an ignoramus like someone other than Plato. It is not possible for knowledge (‘ilm) to be and not to be in one and the same thing. 4 Neither is it possible for one and the same thing to contain both blackness and whiteness (simultaneously). It is similarly impossible for the universal animal to be a particular real animal, for it would then have to be both walker and flyer, as well as not walker or flyer, and be both biped and quadruped.
