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

way analogous to a formal cause, in another analogous to a final cause,
and in a third way analogous to an efficient cause. All this has been
proved in the works of the philosophers, and we state this proposition
here only in a general way. Therefore these difficulties do not touch them.
And this is the theory of Aristotle.’
About this statement-that out of the one only one proceeds-all ancient
philosophers were agreed, when they investigated the first principle of the
world in a dialectical way (they mistook this investigation, however, for a
real demonstration), and they all came to the conclusion that the first
principle is one and the same for everything, and that from the one only
one can proceed. Those two principles having been established, they
started to examine where multiplicity comes from. For they had already
come to the conclusion that the older theory was untenable. This theory
held that the first principles are two, one for the good, one for the bad; for
those older philosophers did not think that the principles of the opposites
could be one and the same; they believed that the most general opposites
which comprehend all opposites are the good and the bad, and held
therefore that the first principles must be two. When, however, after a
close examination, it was discovered that all things tend to one end, and
this end is the order which exists in the world, as it exists in an army
through its leader, and as it exists in cities through their government, they
came to the conclusion that the world must have one highest principle;
and this is the sense of the Holy Words ‘If there were in heaven and earth
gods beside God, both would surely have been corrupted’. They believed
therefore, because of the good which is present in everything, that evil
occurs only in an accidental way, like the punishments which good
governors of cities ordain; for they are evils instituted for the sake of the
good, not by primary intention. For there exist amongst good things some
that can only exist with an admixture of evil, for instance, in the being of
man who is composed of a rational and an animal soul. Divine Wisdom
has ordained, according to these philosophers, that a great quantity of the
good should exist, although it had to be mixed with a small quantity of evil,
for the existence of much good with a little evil is preferable to the nonexistence
of much good because of a little evidence.
Since therefore these later philosophers were convinced that the first
principle must of necessity be one and unique, and this difficulty about the
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