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

I say:
We answer: The consequence of this would be that there
is nothing in the world composed of units, but that everything
that exists is simple and one, and each unit is the effect of a
superior unit and the cause of an inferior, till the series ends
in an effect which has no further effect, just as the ascending
series ends in a cause which has no other cause. But in
reality it is not like this, for, according to the philosophers,
body is composed of form and Kyle, and through this
conjunction there arises one single thing; and man is
composed out of body and soul and body does not arise out
of soul, nor soul out of body: they exist together through
another cause. The sphere, too, is, according to them, like
this, for it is a body possessing a soul and the soul does not
come to be through the body, nor the body through the soul;
no, both proceed from another cause. How do these
compounds, then, come into existence? Through one single
cause? But then their principle that out of the one only one
arises is false. Or through a compound cause? But then the
question can be repeated in the case of this cause, till one
necessarily arrives at a point where the compound and the
simple meet. For the First Principle is simple and the rest are
compound, and this can only be imagined through their
contact. But wherever this contact takes place, this principle,
that out of the one only one proceeds, is false.
This consequence, that everything which exists is simple, is a necessary
consequence for the philosophers, if they assume that the First Agent is
like a simple agent in the empirical world. But this consequence is binding
only upon the man who applies this principle universally to everything that
exists. But the man who divides existents into abstract existents and
material, sensible existents, makes the principles to which the sensible
existent ascends different from the principles to which the intelligible
existent ascends, for he regards as the principles of the sensible existents
matter and form, and he makes some of these existents the agents of
others, till the heavenly body is reached, and he makes the intelligible
substances ascend to a first principle which is a principle to them, in one
159