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

I say:
beings should exist by themselves, for they exist only in an
essence. For life exists in an essence which receives life
through it, and the same is the case with the other attributes.
And therefore they do not simply content themselves with
denying to the First all qualities (and not merely its real
essence and quiddity); no, they deny to it also its very
existence by itself’ and reduce it to the entities of accidents
and attributes which have no existence by themselves; and
besides we shall show later in a special chapter their
incapacity to prove that it is conscious either of itself or of
other things. ‘
The problem concerning the knowledge of the Creator of Himself and of
other things is one of those questions which it is forbidden to discuss in a
dialectical way, let alone put them down in a book, for the understanding
of the masses does not suffice to understand such subtleties, and when
one embarks on such problems with them the meaning of divinity
becomes void for them and therefore it is forbidden to them to occupy
themselves with this knowledge, since it suffices for their blessedness to
understand what is within their grasp. The Holy Law, the first intention of
which is the instruction of the masses, z does not confine itself to the
explanation of these things in the Creator by making them understood
through their existence in human beings, for instance by the Divine Words:
`Why dost thou worship what can neither hear nor see nor avail thee
aught?’, ‘ but enforces the real understanding of these entities in the
Creator by comparing them even to the human limbs, for instance in the
Divine Words: `Or have they not seen that we have created for them of
what our hands have made for them, cattle and they are owners thereof?’
and the Divine Words, `I have created with my two hands’. s This problem
indeed is reserved for the men versed in profound knowledge to whom
God has permitted the sight of the true realities, and therefore it must not
be mentioned in any books except those that are composed according to
a strictly rational pattern, that is, such books as must be read in a rational
order and after the acquisition of other sciences the study of which
according to a demonstrative method is too difficult for most men, even for
those w_ o possess by nature a sound understanding, although such men
289