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

by ‘through which it has its necessary existence’ is meant that which is
really an agent, i.e. that which brings potency into act. The second part is
that the term ‘agent’ seems like a genus for that which acts by choice and
deliberation and for that which acts by nature; this is true, and is proved by
our definition of the term ‘agent’. Only this argument wrongly creates the
impression that the philosophers do not regard the first agent as endowed
with will. And this dichotomy that everything is either of necessary
existence by itself or existent through another is not self-evident.
Ghazali, refuting the philosophers, says:
I say:
This designation is wrong, for we do not call any cause
whatsoever an agent, nor any effect an object; for, if this
were so, it would be not right to say that the inanimate has
no act and that only the living exhibit acts-a statement
generally admitted.
His assertion that not every cause is called an agent is true, but his
argument that the inanimate is not called an agent is false, for the denial
that the inanimate exhibits acts excludes only the rational and voluntary
act, not act absolutely, for we find that certain inanimate things have
powers to actualize things like themselves; e.g. fire, which changes
anything warm and dry into another fire like itself, through converting it
from what it has in potency into actuality. Therefore fire cannot make a
fire like itself in anything that has not the potency or that is not in
readiness to receive the actuality of fire. The theologians, however, deny
that fire is an agent, and the discussion of this problem will follow later.
Further, nobody doubts that there are in the bodies of animals powers
which make the food a part of the animal feeding itself and generally
direct the body of the animal. If we suppose them withdrawn, the animal
would die, as Galen says. And through this direction we call it alive,
whereas in the absence of these powers we call it dead.
Ghazali goes on:
If the inanimate is called an agent, it is by metaphor, in
the same way as it is spoken of metaphorically as tending
and willing, since it is said that the stone falls down, because
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