visible on creatures to be without the one they signify, and the attributes like power and will which are almost visible to be without the one they qualify; with their limitless existences, all the works of art, creatures and artefacts in the universe point decisively to the existence of their Creator, Maker, and Doer, and to the existence of His Names, and to the existence of His attributes, and to the existence of his essential qualities, and to the necessary existence of His Most Pure and Holy Essence.
Similarly, all the different varieties of beauty, perfection, and loveliness to be seen in creatures testify with complete clarity —but in a way particular to and fitting for their sacredness and necessity— to the infinite, unlimited, multifarious beauties and perfections of the acts, names, attributes, qualities, and Essence of the All-Glorious Maker; they point most decisively to their beauties, which far surpass those of all beings.
The Second Proof contains five Points:
First Point: Relying on their illuminations and unveilings, the chiefs of the people of reality have believed and stated unanimously —despite their paths and methods differing greatly from one another— that the instances of beauty in all beings are the shadows, flashes and manifestations of the sacred, hidden beauty of the Necessarily Existent One.
Second Point: All beautiful creatures appear caravan after caravan, and not stopping, disappear; they come one after the other in succession, then depart. Yet an elevated and unchanging beauty displays itself in the mirrors of those creatures, demonstrating certainly through the continuity of its manifestation that the beauty does not belong to the beautiful creatures, to those mirrors. Rather, like the beauty of the sun’s rays is to be seen on the bubbles floating on the surface of running water, they are the lights of an eternal beauty.
Third Point: It is clear that just as light comes from something luminous, the giving of existence from something existent, bounty from riches, munificence from wealth, and instruction from knowledge, so the giving of excellence is from the excellent and the bestowal of beauty is from the beautiful; it could not be in any other way. It is as a consequence of this truth that we believe that all the beauty in the universe comes from the beauty of the beauteous one the constantly changing and renewed universe describes and defines through all its creatures and the tongues of their mirror-like beings.
Fourth Point: Just as the body relies on the spirit and subsists through it and is animated by it, and a word looks to the meaning and is illuminated by it, and form relies on reality and acquires value through it; so this corporeal and material manifest world is a body, a word, a form