which are movements of the tongue in pronunciation, and their signs, which are the written vowel movements. After that we shall discuss words that suggest resemblance when applied to God, exalted is He, as we mentioned.
(The Composition of Realities)
You may say: “This world of single letters, which receives vowel movement without composition—such as the bā governing the genitive and similar single letters—you might have included among the letters because it is single. This, after all, is the subject of composition, namely words!”
We reply: the spirit was not breathed into the bā governing the genitive, nor were the spirits of vowel movements breathed into comparable single letters, so that they might subsist through themselves as the world of letters subsists on its own without vowel movements. Rather, the spirit was breathed into it for the sake of something else. It is therefore composite, and it is not given that description until it is joined to something else. Thus one says bi-llah, ta-llah, and wa-llahi la-aʿbudanna—“By God,” “By God,” and “By God, I shall surely worship”—and sa-aʿbudu, “I shall worship”; and “[quotation missing in the supplied text]” [Qur’an 3:43], and similar expressions. If you isolate it, it has no meaning other than its own meaning.
These realities arising from composition exist when it exists and are absent when it is absent. Animality is a reality that never exists except when simple realities, intelligible in themselves, are brought together: corporeality, nutrition, and sensation. When body, nutrition, and sensation are combined, the reality of the animal appears. It is neither body alone, nor nutrition alone, nor sensation alone. If you remove the reality of sensation and combine body with nutrition, you say “plant”: a reality that is not—
