Its rank, and that it is incapable in itself of having the rule of another power, such as the preserving, pictorial, and imaginative power, and the powers that are the senses, such as touch, taste, smell, hearing, and sight. And with all of these shortcomings, the mind imitates them in knowing its Lord, and does not imitate its Lord in what He tells about Himself in His Book and on the tongue of His Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace. May God bless him and grant him peace. This is one of the most amazing mistakes that have ever occurred in the world
[ The limits of the horizons of the mind in terms of its apparent and hidden powers ]
And every thinker is subject to the rule of this mistake, without a doubt, except for those whose insight God has enlightened, so he knows that God has given everything its creation, so He has given hearing its creation, so that it does not go beyond its perception, and He has made the mind in need of it, drawing from it the knowledge of sounds, the division of letters, the changing of words, and the diversity of languages, and it differentiates. Between the sound of birds, the blowing of the wind, the creaking of a door, the murmur of water, the shouting of a human being, the yawning of a sheep, the bleating of rams, the mooing of cows, the bleating of camels, and similar sounds, all of them, and within the power of the mind in its own right is the perception [Page 289 of the Cairo Edition] of any of this which hearing has not reached it. Likewise, with the visual faculty, God made the mind poor in what it brings to it of visible objects, so it does not know greenness, yellowness, blueness, whiteness, blackness, or the colors between them unless the sight bestows upon the mind them, and so on.