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

man, he could never be unaware of them, and never for a
moment not think of them, just as he is never unconscious of
himself; for nobody’s self is ever unaware of itself, but it is
always affirming itself in its soul, but as long as man has not
heard any one speaking about the heart and the brain or has
not observed them through the dissection of another man,
he does not perceive them and does not believe in their
existence. But if the intellect inhered in the body, it would
necessarily either think or not think of this body continually;
neither the one nor the other is the case, but it sometimes
thinks of its body and sometimes does not. This can be
proved by the fact that the perception which inheres in the
substratum perceives that substratum either because of a
relation between itself and the substratum-and one cannot
imagine another relation between them than that of
inherence-and then the perception must perceive its
substratum continually, or this relation will not suffice; and in
this case the perception can never perceive its substratum,
since there can never occur another relation between them;
just as because of the fact that it thinks itself, it thinks itself
always and is not sometimes aware, sometimes unaware of
itself.
But we answer: As long as a man is conscious of himself
and aware of his soul, he is also aware of his body; indeed,
the name, form, and shape of the heart are not well defined
for him, but he regards his soul and self as a body to such
an extent that he regards even his clothes and his house as
belonging to his self, ‘ but the soul or the self which the
philosophers mention has no relation to the house or the
clothes. This primary attribution of the soul to the body is
necessary for man, and his unconsciousness of the form and
name of his soul is like his unconsciousness of the seat of
smell, which is two excrescences in the foremost part of the
brain resembling the nipples of the breast; still, everyone
knows that he perceives smell with his body, but he does not
represent the shape of the seat of this perception, nor does
he define this seat, although he perceives that it is nearer to
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