Similarly, the idolater is like one who is dumb who never possessed in his creation a preparedness for speech since he [the idolater] was not prepared for perception or [for] the intellect, which is the specific quality of the human being, in order to perceive the necessity of the existence of the Truth, exalted be He, and His perfectedness or the contingency of the other and his deficiency, such that he could dissociate from what is other than Him and take refuge with Him instead of with the strength or might of his soul or those of another; having no power over anything, because of his incapacity and the failure of his faculty due to the deficiency that adheres to his [defective] preparedness, and who is a liability to his master, because of his inability by nature to actualise his need; and so he is naturally a slave [to him], needy and submissive before the other, lagging behind the level of everything since he is less than nothing as the contingent being which he worships is nothing, whether that [contigent thing] be a king, a celestial sphere, a planet or an intellect or otherwise; wherever he directs him, he does not bring any good, because of his lack of preparedness and his evilness by nature, such that he corresponds only to evil which is non-existence. How then can he bring any good? Is he equal, to the affirmer of Oneness who subsists in God and who is annihilated to what is other than Him and even to his own soul, one who upholds the truth, treats creatures with justice and enjoins justice? For justice is the shadow of the unity in the world of multiplicity. Thus wherever he upholds the unity of the Essence, the shadow of that [unity] falls upon all, and so he is always an enjoiner of justice, and follows a path that is straight?, that is, the path of God upon whom are His elect from among the folk of subsistence after annihilation, the one stretched out for the folk of the reality over the hellfire of nature and which they cross [as quickly] as a lightning flash.