Tahafut_al-Tahafut-transl-Engl-van-den-Bergh

I say:
which are very close to those we have mentioned. For,
according to the philosophers, nothing that is self-subsistent
and does not inhere in a substratum’ can be imagined as
becoming non-existent after its existence, whether it is
produced or eternal.’ If one objects against them, that when
water is boiled it disappears, they answer that it does not
disappear, but is only changed into steam and the steam
becomes water again, and its primary matter, i.e. its hyle, the
matter in which the form of water inhered, persists when the
water has become air, for the hyle only loses the form of
water and takes up that of air; the air, having become cold
again, condenses into water, but does not receive a new
matter, for the matter is common to the elements and only
the forms are changed in it.
He who affirms that accidents do not persist for two moments, and that
their existence in substances is a condition of the persistence of those
substances, does not know how he contradicts himself, for if the
substances are a condition of the existence of the accidents-since the
accidents cannot exist without the substances in which they inhere-and
the accidents are assumed to be a condition for the existence of the
substances, the substances must be necessarily a condition for their own
existence; and it is absurd to say that something is a condition for its own
existence. Further, how could the accidents be such a condition, since
they themselves do not persist for two moments? For, as the instant is at
the same time the end of their privation and the beginning of their period
of existence, the substance mint be destroyed in this instant, for in this
instant there is neither anything of the privative period nor anything of the
existent. If there were in the instant anything of the privative period or of
the existent, it could not be the end of the former and the beginning of the
latter.’ And on the whole, that something which does not persist two
moments should be made a condition for the persistence of something for
two moments is absurd. Indeed, a thing that persists for two moments is
more capable of persisting than one which does not persist for two
moments, for the existence of what does not persist for two moments is at
an instant, which is in flux, but the existence of what persists for two
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