17 Preface وَاللَّهُ أَنبَتَكُم مِنَ الأَرضِ نَباتًاAhmed AliGod produced you from the earth like a vegetable growth;1 Read with verse 30:54, 4:1, 6:2 7:26, 3:59, 22:5 etc., this would confirm matter to be the basic element in man’s make-up. He is, however, distinguished from the rest of creation by having something supernal in his being. Having fashioned his body from fermented clay (15:28) God breathed into him of His spirit (15:29), thus giving him the participating energy with nature. Yet the metaphorical use of words as ‘clay’ with its suggestion of matter, and ‘spirit’ with that of breath, expresses an inner and deeper transcendental reality, as words are used for thoughts, thought implying a higher order above transcending all limitations. The conceptual phrases, this, acquire, primary authority, the elemental process of physical formation and reproductive processes of conception and growth being common to all animals, as germination is to vegetables, man alone possessing the discriminating quality of the divine spirit. The primary concept that is thus established through the metonymy of words is the omnipotence of God.