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

anterior to it. If God therefore is the cause of the composition of the parts
of the world, the existence of which is in their composition, then He is the
cause of their existence and necessarily he who is the cause of the
existence of anything whatever is its agent. This is the way in which
according to the philosophers this question must be understood, if their
system is truly explained to the student.
Ghazali says, speaking on behalf of the philosophers:
I say:
The philosophers may say: we call an object anything
that has no necessary existence by itself, but exists through
another, and we call its cause the agent, and we do not mind
whether the cause acts by nature or voluntarily, just as you
do not mind whether it acts by means of an instrument or
without an instrument, and just as ‘act’ is a genus subdivided
into ‘acts which occur by means of an instrument’ and ‘acts
which occur without an instrument’, so it is a genus
subdivided into ‘acts which occur by nature’ and ‘acts which
occur voluntarily’. The proof is that, when we speak of an act
which occurs by nature, our words ‘by nature’ are not
contradictory to the term ‘act’; the words ‘by nature’ are not
used to exclude or contradict the idea of act, but are meant
only to explain the specific character of the act, just as, when
we speak of an act effected directly without an instrument,
there is no contradiction, but only a specification and an
explanation. And when we speak of a ‘voluntary act’, there is
not a redundancy as in the expression a ‘living being-man’;’
it is only an explanation of its specific character, like the
expression, ‘act performed by means of an instrument’. If,
however, the word ‘act’ included the idea of will, and will
were essential to act, in so far as it is an act, our expression
‘natural act’ would be a contradiction.
The answer, in short, has two parts. The first is that everything that is
necessary through another thing is an object of what is necessary by
itself,z but this can be opposed, since that through which the ‘necessary
through another’ has its necessary existence need not be an agent, unless
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