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

receive a stronger degree of assent, and unsupported by
imagination their assent is weakened; but only the masses
rely on imagination, and he who is well trained in intellectual
thought and renounces imagination accepts both
propositions with the same degree of assent.
The strongest degree of evidence pertains to this proposition when a
man makes an induction from transitory existents and sees that they only
change their names and definitions through their acts and that, if any
existent whatever could arise from any act and any agent whatever, the
essences and definitions would become mixed and knowledge would be
annihilated. The soul, for instance, distinguishes itself from the inorganic
only through its special acts which proceed from it, and inorganic things
are only distinguished from one another through the acts that are proper to
them; and the same applies to souls. And if many acts were to proceed
from a single potency, in the way that many acts proceed from composite
potencies, there would be no difference between the simple and the
composite essence and they would be indistinguishable for us. And again,
if many acts could proceed from one single essence, an act without an
agent would be possible, for an existent comes to be through an existent,
not through a non-existent, and therefore the non-existent cannot come to
be by itself; and if it is true that the mover of the privation and the
transposer of its potency into act transposes it only through the actuality it
possesses itself, of necessity the actuality it possesses must be of the
same kind as the act it transposes If any effect whatever could proceed
from any agent whatever, it would not be impossible that the effects
should be actualized by themselves without an agent. And if many kinds of
potency could be actualized through one and the same agent, this agent
would itself have to possess these kinds or related kinds, for if it
possessed only one of these kinds, all the other kinds would have to be
actualized by themselves without a cause. It is not permissible to say: The
only condition for the agent is that it exists as acting with an absolute
action, not with a specified kind of action; for, in that case, any existent
whatever would be able to perform any act whatever and what exists
would be mixed;’ besides, the absolute, that is the universal, existent
stands nearer to non-existence than the real individual existent. So those
who denied the theory of universals denied the belief in a universal
existent and in a universal becoming , whereas the champions of this
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