For if a thing has sight, it also has life; and if it has hearing, it is a sign of life; and if it has speech, it points to the existence of life; and if it has will and choice, it shows life. Thus, attributes such as absolute power, comprehensive will, and all-embracing knowledge, the existence of which is clear and certain due to their works and effects in the universe, testify, through all their evidences, to the life and necessary existence of the Ever-Living and Self-Subsistent One, the eternal life which illuminates the whole universe with a single of its shadows, and, through a single of its manifestations gives life to the realm of the hereafter, even its very particles.
Life looks also to the pillar of belief in the angels and proves it indirectly. For since the most important result of the universe is life; and it is living beings that are most widely spread, and because of their value, their copies are most duplicated, and who populate the guesthouse of the earth with their travelling caravans; and since the globe of the earth has been filled with so many living creatures, and for the purpose of renewing and multiplying the animate species is continuously emptied and refilled; and since life is created on it in even rotting and corrupt matter and it has become a mass of micro-organisms; and since consciousness and intelligence, the purest distilled essence of life, and spirit, its most subtle and stable substance, are created in great profusion on the earth, and quite simply the earth has been infused with life through life, intelligence, consciousness, and spirits, and inhabited in that way; since this is so, surely the heavenly bodies, which are subtler, more luminous, larger and more important than the earth, could not be dead, inanimate, lacking life and consciousness; it would be beyond the bounds of possibility. That is to say, in accordance with the mystery of life, there will surely be living, conscious inhabitants of the skies, the suns, and the stars suitable to the heavens, who will endow them with their living state, demonstrate the result of the creation of the heavens, and receive the divine addresses; and they are the angels.
The essential nature of life also looks to the pillar of belief in the messengers, and proves it indirectly. Yes, since the universe was created for life, and life is a greatest manifestation of the Pre-Eternal Self-Subsistent One, a perfect inscription of His, a most beautiful work of His art; and since the Eternal Life shows Itself through the sending of messengers and revealing of scriptures, for if there were no Books or messengers, that Pre-Eternal Life would not be known – just as it is through his speech that it is understood that a person is alive, so too it is messengers and the scriptures they bring that make known the words and speech of the One who speaks from beyond the World of the Unseen, beneath the veil of the universe,