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

emanates from the First Principle; and if this were not the case, its parts
would disconnect themselves and it would not persist for the twinkling of
an eye. If, however, it is necessary that for a single animal there should be
a single spiritual potency, permeating all its parts, through which the
plurality of potencies and bodies in it becomes unified, so that it can be
said of its bodies and potencies that they are one, and if, further, the
relations of individual beings to the universe in its totality are like the
relation of the parts of an animal to the animal itself, it needs must be the
case that all the potencies in the particular parts of this unique animal and
in the psychological and intellectual motive powers of these parts should
be such that there is in them one single spiritual force which connects all
the spiritual and bodily potencies and which permeates the universe in
one and the same penetration. If this were not the case, no order and no
proportion would exist. And in this way it is true that God is the creator,
supporter, and preserver of everything, and to this the Divine Words apply:
‘Verily, God supports the heavens and the earth lest they should
decline.’S And it in no way follows from the fact that this one potency
permeates many things that there should be a plurality in it, as those
thought who said that from the First Principle there can in the first place
emanate only one from which plurality can then emanate; for this
statement can only be regarded as valid if the immaterial agent is
compared to the material agent. Therefore the term ‘agent’ can only be
applied equivocally to both the immaterial agent and the material. And this
will explain to you the possibility of the procession of plurality from the
Monad.
Again, the existence of all other separate principles consists only in the
forms in which they conceive the First Principle, and it is not impossible
that this should be one identical thing, notwithstanding the difference of
the forms in which they conceive it, in the same way as it is not impossible
that a plurality should be conceived through one and the same form. And
we find, indeed, that all the heavenly bodies in their daily movement, and
the sphere of the fixed stars, conceive one identical form’ and that they all,
moving in this daily movement, are moved by one and the same mover,
who is the mover of the sphere of the fixed stars; and we find, too, that
they have also different particular movements. Therefore it needs must be
that their movements proceed partly from different movers, partly namely
through the connexion of their movements with the first sphere-from one
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