fragment of glass; the two are equal; so it is as easy for the luminous power of the Light of Lights to create and rotate the heavens and stars as it is to create flies and particles and rotate them; neither presents any difficulties for it.

Also, just as through the quality of transparency and through Divine power, the sun’s image is present with the same ease in a tiny mirror or in the pupil of the eye as, through the Divine command, its light is reflected on all shining things and droplets, and translucent motes, and on the surface of the sea; so too, since the inner faces of the essences of things are transparent and shining, the manifestation and effect of absolute power creates all living beings with the ease of creating a single individual; there is no difference between many and few, great and small.

Also, if two walnuts of equal weight were placed on a pair of scales which were absolutely precise and large enough to weigh mountains, and a tiny seed was added to one of the walnuts, it would raise one of the pans to the height of a mountain-top and lower the other to the bottom of the valley with the same ease as raising one pan to the skies and lowering the other to the valley bottom if two mountains of equal weight had been placed in the pans and a walnut added to one. In exactly the same way, in the terminology of the science of theology (kalam), contingency is equal in regard to existence and non-existence. That is, if there is nothing to cause their existence, things which are not necessary but contingent are equal in regard to existence and non-existence; there is no difference. Few or many, big or small are the same in regard to this contingency and equality. Thus, creatures are contingent, and since within the sphere of contingency their existence and non-existence are equal, it is as easy for the boundless pre-eternal power of the Necessarily Existent One to give existence to a single contingent being as to give all contingent beings existence and clothe everything in an appropriate being, spoiling the balance of non-existence. And when the being’s duties are completed, He takes off its garment of external existence and sends it apparently to non-existence, but in fact to an existence within the sphere of His knowledge. This means that if things are ascribed to the Absolutely Powerful One, the raising to life of the spring becomes as easy as that of a flower, and the raising to life of all mankind at the resurrection of the dead as easy as raising to life a single soul. Whereas if they are ascribed to causes, a flower becomes