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

I say:
This is what we wanted to mention about those sciences
to which they give the name of metaphysical.
As to his regarding it as impossible that there should exist an immaterial
intellect which thinks things with their consequences, comprising them all,
neither the impossibility nor the necessity of its existence is a self-evident
fact, but the philosophers affirm that they have a proof of its existence. As
to the existence of infinite representations, this cannot be imagined in any
individual, but the philosophers affirm that they have a proof of the
existence of the infinite in the eternal knowledge and an answer to the
question how man can attain knowledge of particular events in the future
through the eternal knowledge, namely that of these things the soul thinks
only the universal which is in the intellect, not the particular which is
particularized in the soul. For individuals are known to the soul because it
is potentially all existents, and what is in potency emerges into act either
through the sensible things or through the nature of the intellect, which is
prior to sensible things in reality (I mean the intellect through which
sensible things become stable intelligibles, not, however, in such a way
that in this knowledge there are representations of an infinite number of
individuals). ‘ In short, the philosophers assert that these two kinds of
knowledge, the universal and the particular, are unified in the knowledge
which is separated from matter; and when this knowledge emanates in the
sublunary world it divides itself into universal and particular, although this
knowledge itself is neither the one nor the other. But the proof of this or its
contrary cannot be given here. And the discussion here about these
questions is like the assumption of geometrical propositions which are not
well enough known to meet with immediate assent and which are not
convincing at first sight. And Ghazali mixes one part with another, i. e. lie
starts objecting to one part of the theory through another, and this is the
worst method of discussion, because in this way assent neither by proof
nor by persuasion can be obtained.
Likewise the problems about the differences between the souls of the
heavenly bodies and the soul of man are all very obscure, and when such
things are discussed in a place not proper to them the discussion
becomes either irrelevant or dialectical and superficial; that is to say, the
conclusions are drawn from possible premisses, like their assertion that
404