Here, Maimonides explains that “there is a great difference between bringing to view the existence of a thing and demonstrating its essence”. He gives several examples of how it is possible to speak about an entity by referring to its accidents, its properties, or its effects on the external world, and that often this is enough to convince another person that the entity exists. His first few examples are quite mundane, for example, he writes about how one could tell his compatriot about the king of thier country by pointing to physical features of the king, or by describing his entourage, or by describing his demeanour.

The ultimate example that Maimonides gives to differentiate between “bringing to view the existence of a thing” and “demonstrating its essence” is that of someone who proves the existence of a king by pointing to the existence of a functioning society which works only because of the implicit belief in the sanctity of life and property that subjects of the king enjoy. For example,

The fact that this banker here, a weak and little person, stands before this large mass of gold pieces, and that poor man, tall and strong, who stands before him asking in vain for alms of the weight of a carob-grain, is rebuked and is compelled to go away by the mere force of words: for had he not feared the king, he would, without hesitation, have killed the banker, or pushed him away and taken as much of the money as he could.

According to Maimonides, a literal and simplistic reading of the Torah — i.e., the commandments given to “ordinary men” — leads to an understanding of God of this kind. “For it was found necessary to teach all of them that God exists”, but this was “shown to ordinary men by means of similes taken from physical bodies”. Maimonides identifies four qualities of God and four corresponding types of similes that are used to explain these qualities “in the language of man”:

  1. that God is living — using locomotion and its organs such as feet
  2. God’s knowledge — using sense-perception and its organs such as ear, eye, nose
  3. God’s ‘communication’ to his prophets — using speech, and its organs such as mouth and tongue
  4. God’s work — using literal handiwork and its organs such as hand, fingers, and palm.

This typology is accompanied by an extensive bibliography of Biblical anthropomorphisms. But Maimonides waves away the literal interpretation of all of this by stating that these four types of organs — locomotion, sense perception, communication, and organs of work — are needed by living things on Earth in order to sustain, protect, and reproduce themselves. But, says Maimonides,

I do not believe that any man can doubt the correctness of the assertion that the Creater is not in need of anything for the continuance of His existence, or for the improvement of His condition. Therefore, God has no organs, or, what is the same, He is not corporeal; His actions are accomplished by His Essence…