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

This is what we wanted to do first, namely to expound
their view, then to render it intelligible, thirdly to show the
perversities implied in it.
We shall now pass on to relate the artfulness of their
theory and the point where it fails. Their artfulness lies in the
fact that they say: ‘There are here three different moments,
and a sequence of different things in one single subject no
doubt implies a change in it. For if at the moment of the
eclipse God thought that what was happening was like what
had been before, He would be ignorant; if, on the other
hand, He knew that it was happening and knew previously
that it was not happening, but would happen, His knowledge
and His condition would have become different, and this
would imply a change, for “change” means only a difference
in the knowledge and a difference in the knowledge implies a
difference in the knower, for he who did not know a thing and
then knows it, has changed; previously he had no knowledge
that it was happening, and then his knowledge was realized:
therefore he changed. ‘
And they have elaborated this by saying that there are
three kinds of conditions;, first a condition which is a mere
relation, as when we say right and left, for this does not refer
to an essential attribute, but is a mere relation; for if you
change a thing from your right to your left, your relation to it
changes, but the condition of your essence does not change,
for the relation changes with respect to the essence, but the
essence does not change. The second kind of condition is of
the same type, i. e. when you have the capacity to move
bodies in front of you, and those bodies or part of them
disappear, your innate power and your capacity does not
change, for your capacity is first the capacity to move body
in general and secondly to move a definite body in so far as
it is a body; and the relation of the capacity to the definite
body is not an essential attribute, but a mere relation, and
the disappearance of the body determines the cessation of
the relation, but not a change in the condition of the one who
363