Al-Kātibī explains and criticises the proposition, maintained by contemporary philosophers generally--"That the existent is good, and the non-existent is evil".[92:2] The fact of murder, he says, is not evil because the murderer had the power of committing such a thing; or because the instrument of murder had the power of cutting; or because the neck of the murdered had the capacity of being cut asunder. It is evil because it signifies the negation of life--a condition which is non-existential, and not existential like the conditions indicated above. But in order to show that evil is non-existence, we should make an inductive inquiry, and examine all the various cases of evil. A perfect induction, however, is impossible, and an incomplete induction cannot prove the point. Al-Kātibī, therefore, rejects this proposition, and holds that "non-existence is absolute nothing".[93:1] The possible '_essences_', according to him, are not lying fixed in space waiting for the attribute of existence; otherwise fixity in space would have to be regarded as possessing no existence. But his critics hold that this argument is true only on the supposition that fixity in space and existence are identical. Fixity in externality, says Ibn Mubārak, is a conception wider than existence. All existence is external, but all that is external is not necessarily existent. [92:2] Ibn Mubārak, fol. 14a. [93:1] Ibn Mubārak's Commentary, fol. 14b. The interest of the As̱ẖ‘arite in the dogma of the Resurrection--the possibility of the reappearance of the non-existent as existent--led them to advocate the apparently absurd proposition that "non-existence or nothing _is_ something". They argued that, since we make judgments about the non-existent, it is, therefore, known; and the fact of its knowability indicates that "the nothing" is not absolutely nothing. The knowable is a case of affirmation and the non-existent being knowable, is a case of affirmation.[94:1] Al-Kātibī denies the truth of the Major. Impossible things, he says, are known, yet they do not externally exist. Al-Rāzī criticises this argument accusing Al-Kātibī of the ignorance of the fact that the '_essence_' exists in the mind, and yet is known as external. Al-Kātibī supposes that the knowledge of a thing necessitates its existence as an independent objective reality. Moreover it should be remembered that the As̱ẖ‘arite discriminate between positive and existent on the one hand, and non-existent and negative on the other. They say that all existent is positive, but the converse of this proposition is not true. There is certainly a relation between the existent and the non-existent, but there is absolutely no relation between the positive and the negative. We do not say, as Al-Kātibī holds, that the impossible is non-existent; we say that the impossible is only negative. Substances which do exist are something positive. As regards the attribute which cannot be conceived as existing apart from