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

I say:
black and white, fourness and threeness, and all other
accidents that they exist by themselves. ‘
The error and confusion in his statement is very evident, for it has been
proved that there is among attributes one that has a greater claim to the
term `substantiality’ than the substance existing by itself, and this is the
attribute through which the substance existing by itself becomes existing
by itself. For it has been proved that the substratum for this attribute is
something neither existing by itself nor existing in actuality; no, its existing
by itself and its actual existence derive from this attribute, and this
attribute in its existence is like that which receives the accidents, although
certain of these attributes, as is evident from their nature, need a
substratum in the changeable things, since it is the fundamental law of the
accidents, that they exist in something else, whereas the fundamental law
of the quiddities is that they exist by themselves, except when, in the
sublunary world, these quiddities need a substratum through being in
transitory i things. But this attribute is at the greatest distance from the
nature of an accident, and to compare this transcendent knowledge to
sublunary accidents is extremely foolish, indeed more foolish than to
consider the soul an accident like threeness and fourness.
And this suffices to show the incoherence and the foolishness of this
whole argument, and let us rather call this book simply `The Incoherence’,
not `The Incoherence of the Philosophers’. And what is further from the
nature of an accident than the nature of knowledge, and especially the
knowledge of the First? And since it is at the greatest distance from the
nature of an accident, it is at the greatest distance from having a necessity
for a substratum.
THE SEVENTH DISCUSSION
TO REFUTE THEIR CLAIM THAT NOTHING CAN SHARE
WITH THE FIRST ITS GENUS, AND BE DIFERENTIATED
FROM IT THROUGH A SPECK DIFERENCE, AND THAT
WITH RESPECT TO ITS INTELLECT THE DIVISION INTO
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