Similarly...

Similarly, there is another faculty which can understand general meanings, which can prepare the mind for confirmations and propositions, and which can make possible the reflections and mental deductions, be they empirical or theoretical. Through these internal faculties, man can expand the zone of his awareness and draw conclusions from innate and palpable experiences and perceptions.

Development of philosophy, sciences and industries is indebted to these inward and mental faculties, with this difference that what is in mind in other sciences (apart from philosophy) is the recognition of features and effects of creatures so as to exploit them for better living. But the main objective in philosophy is to recognize the intrinsic qualities, as well as the cause and effect relation of objects.

Complete recognition of a being is not feasible without recognizing its existential causes: ‘Ash-Shaykhur-Ra'is has expressed this rule in detail in his Kitabush-Shifa. As the chain of reason leads to the Almighty Allah (SWT), it can be concluded that man's rational movement leads to piety. Many philosophers believe that man's scientific development ends at this point.

For this reason, they regard man's perfection - or to put it more precisely, man's scientific perfection - limited to the mind's all-embracing awareness of the world of being. But further consideration of innate desires indicates than man's instinct to seek the truth is not fully satisfied with this degree of awareness and demands an objective awareness, as well as a speculative and intuitive understanding of the realities of existence.

And such an understanding could not be reached with mental concepts and philosophical discussion. No matter how extensive and clear the mental perceptions and concepts are, they cannot show us the objective realities. The difference between these and external realities can be compared to the difference between the meaning of hunger and its inward reality. Our conception of hunger is a state coming over man when his body is in need of food.

But if a person has never experienced this state, he cannot understand it through this definition. In like manner, for (showing) the realities of being, ranging from Allah (SWT) to matter, philosophy can provide us only with such concepts while the recognition and realization of objective realities is far different from such definitions.