The first of the qualities necessary in God is existence (_wujud_); and there is a difference of opinion as to its meaning. All except the Imam al-Ash‘ari and his followers hold that existence is the state (_hal_) necessary to the essence so long as the essence abides; and this state has no cause (_illa_). And the meaning of it being a state is that it does not attain to the degree of an entity (_mawjud_) and does not fall to the degree of a non-entity (_ma‘dum_), so that it should be non-existence pure, but is half way between an entity and a non-entity. So the existence of Zayd, for example, is a state necessary to his essence; that is, it cannot be separated from his essence. And when it is said that it has no cause, the meaning is that it does not originate in anything, as opposed to Zayd’s potentiality (_qadir_, powerful), for example, which originates in his power (_qudra_). So Zayd’s potentiality and his existence are two states which subsist in his essence, unperceived by any of the five senses; only, the first has a cause in which it originates, and it is power, and the second has no cause. This is the description of a personal state (_hal nafsi_) and every state subsisting in an essence, without a cause, is a personal quality (_sifa nafsiya_). It is that without which the essence is unthinkable; that is, the essence cannot be apprehended by the intellect and comprehended except through its personal quality, like limitation for a body. For, if you apprehend and comprehend a body, you have comprehended that it is limited. So, according to this doctrine—that existence is a state—the essence of God is not His existence and the essences of the created things are not their existences. But al-Ash‘ari and his followers hold that existence is the self (_ayn_) of an entity, and according to their view the existence of God is the self of His essence and not an addition to it externally, and the existence of a created thing is the self of its essence. And, on this view, it is not clear how existence can be reckoned as a quality, because existence is the self of the essence, and a quality, on the other hand, as we have seen already, is something else than the essence. But if he makes existence a quality, then the thing is plain and the meaning that existence is necessary in God, according to the first view, is that the personal quality is a state established in God; and its meaning, on the second view, is that the essence of God is an entity with external reality, so that if the veil were removed from us we would see it. The essence of God, then, is a reality; only, its existence is something else than it, on the one view, and is it, on the other.