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

accidental and conventional. If a man pronounces the
formula of divorce against his wife without the divorce
becoming irrevocable immediately, one does not imagine
that it will become so later. For he made the formula through
convention and usage a cause of the judgement, and we do
not believe that the effect can be delayed, except when the
divorce depends on an ulterior event, e.g. on the arrival of
tomorrow or on someone’s entering the house, for then the
divorce does not take place at once, but only when tomorrow
arrives or someone enters the house; in this case the man
made the formula a cause only in conjunction with an ulterior
event. But as this event, the coming of tomorrow and
someone’s entering the house, is not yet actual, the effect is
delayed until this future event is realized. The effect only
takes place when a new event, i.e. entering the house or the
arrival of tomorrow, has actually happened. Even if a man
wanted to delay the effect after the formula, without making it
dependent on an ulterior event, this would be regarded as
impossible, although it is he himself who lays down the
convention and fixes its modalities. If thus in conventional
matters such a delay is incomprehensible and inadmissible,
how can we admit it in essential, rational, and necessary
causal relations? In respect of our conduct and our voluntary
actions, there is a delay in actual volition only when there is
some obstacle. When there is actual volition and actual
power and the obstacles are eliminated, a delay in the object
willed is inadmissible.; A delay in the object willed is
imaginable only in decision, for decision is not sufficient for
the existence of the act; the decision to write does not
produce the writing, if it is not, as a new fact, accompanied
by an act of volition, i.e. an impulse in the man which
presents itself at the moment of the act. If there is thus an
analogy between the eternal Will and our will to act, a delay
of the object willed is inadmissible, unless through an
obstacle, and an antecedent existence of the volition is
equally inadmissible, for I cannot will to get up tomorrow
except by way of decision. If, however, the eternal Will is
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