(1). The conception of my existence is something immediate or intuitive. The thought "I exist" is a "concept", and my body being an element of this "concept", it follows that my body is intuitively known as something real. If the knowledge of the existent is not immediate, the fact of its perception would require a process of thought which, as we know, it does not. The As̱ẖ‘arite Al-Rāzī admits that the concept of existence is immediate; but he regards the judgment--"The concept of existence is immediate"--as merely a matter of acquisition. Muḥammad ibn Mubārak Buḵẖārī, on the other hand, says that the whole argument of the realist proceeds on the assumption that the concept of my existence is something immediate--a position which can be controverted.[84:1] If, says he, we admit that the concept of my existence is immediate, abstract existence cannot be regarded as a constitutive element of this conception. And if the realist maintains that the perception of a particular object is immediate, we admit the truth of what he says; but it would not follow, as he is anxious to establish, that the so called underlying essence is immediately known as objectively real. The realist argument, moreover, demands that the mind ought not to be able to conceive the predication of qualities to things. We cannot conceive, "snow is white", because whiteness, being a part of this immediate judgment, must also be immediately known without any predication. Mulla Muḥammad Hās̱ẖim Ḥusainī remarks[85:1] that this reasoning is erroneous. The mind in the act of predicating whiteness of snow is working on a purely ideal existence--the quality of whiteness--and not on an objectively real essence of which the qualities are mere facets or aspects. Ḥusainī, moreover, anticipates Hamilton, and differs from other realists in holding that the so-called unknowable essence of the object is also immediately known. The object, he says, is immediately perceived as one.[85:2] We do not successively perceive the various aspects of what happens to be the objects of our perception. [84:1] Muḥammad ibn Mubārak's commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain, fol. 5a. [85:1] Ḥusainī's commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain, fol. 13a. [85:2] Ḥusainī's commentary on Ḥikmat al-‘Ain, fol. 14b.