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

yourselves from plurality, for we ask: “Is the knowledge He
has of His essence identical with His essence or not?” If you
say, “No”, you introduce plurality, and if you say they are
identical, what then is the difference between you and a man
who said that a man’s knowledge of his essence was
identical with his essence, which is pure foolishness? For the
existence of this man’s essence can be conceived, while he
gives no attention to his essence, ‘ whereas when afterwards
his attention returns, he becomes aware of his essence.
Therefore his awareness of his essence differs from his
essence. ‘
If it is argued: `Certainly a man can be without knowledge
of his essence, but when this knowledge occurs to him, he
becomes a different being’, we answer: ‘Non-identity cannot
be understood through an accident and conjunction, for the
identical thing cannot through an accident become another
thing and that other thing, conjoined with this, does not
become identical with it, but keeps its individual otherness.
And the fact that God is eternally self-conscious does not
prove that His knowledge of His essence is identical with His
essence, for His essence can be imagined separately and
the occurrence of His awareness afterwards, and if they
were identical this could not be imagined.
And if it be said: `His essence is intellect and knowledge,
and He has not an essence in which afterwards knowledge
exists’, we answer: `The foolishness of this is evident, for
knowledge is an attribute and an accident which demands a
subject, and to say, “He is in His essence intellect and
knowledge” is like saying, “He is power and will, and power
and will exist by themselves”, and this again is like saying of
black and white, quantity, fourness and threeness and all
other accidents that they exist by themselves. And in exactly
the same way as it is impossible that the attributes of bodies
should exist by themselves without a body which itself is
different from the attributes, it is known to be impossible that
attributes like the knowledge, life, power, and will of living
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