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

miraculous and all miracles are natural. Averroës asks a good question:
What is really meant by habit, is it a habit in man or in nature? I do not
know how Hume would answer this question. For if causation is a habit in
man, what makes it possible that such a habit can be formed? What is the
objective counterpart of these habits? There is another question which has
been asked by the Greek opponents of this theory, but which is not
mentioned by Averroës: How many times must such a sequence be
observed before such a habit can be formed? There is yet another
question that might be asked: Since we cannot act before such a habit is
formed-for action implies causation-what are we doing until then? What,
even, is the meaning of ‘I act’ and ‘I do’? If there is nothing in the world but
a sequence of events, the very word ‘activity’ will have no sense, and it
would seem that we would be doomed to an eternal passivity. Averroës’
answer to this denial of natural law is that universals themselves imply
already the idea of necessity and law. I think this answer is correct. When
we speak, for instance, of wood or stone, we express by those words an
hypothetical necessity, that is, we mean a certain object, which in suchand-such
circumstances will necessarily behave in a certain way that the
behaviour of wood, for example, is based on its nature, that is, on the
potentialities it has.
I may remark here that it seems to me probable that Nicholas of
Autrecourt, ‘the medieval Hume’, was influenced by Ghazali’s Ash‘arite
theories. He denies in the same way as Ghazali the logical connexion
between cause and effect: ‘ex eo quod aliqua res est cognita esse, non
potest evidenter evidentia reducta in primum principium vel in certitudinem
primi principii inferri, quod alia res sit’ (cf. Lappe, ‘Nicolaus von
Autrecourt’, Beitr. z. Gesch. d. Phil. d. M. B.vi, H.2, p. 11); he gives the
same example of ignis and stupa, he seems to hold also the Ash‘arite
thesis of God as the sole cause of all action (cf. op. cit., p. 24), and he
quotes in one place Ghazali’s Metaphysics (cf. N. of Autrecourt, ‘Exigit
ordo executionis’, in Mediaeval Studies, vol. i, ed. by J. Reginald
O’Donnell, Toronto, 1931, p. 2o8). Now Nicholas’s works were burnt
during his lifetime in Paris in 1347, whereas the Latin translation of the
Tahafut al Tahafut by Calo Calonymus was terminated in Arles in 1328.
The second point Ghazali wants to refute are the proofs for the
substantiality and the spirituality of the soul as given by the philosophers.
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