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

valid so far as it concerns external things or things in the soul that have a
beginning and an end. For of the number which exists only potentially, i.e.
which has neither beginning nor end, it cannot truly be said that it is even
or uneven, or that it begins or ends; it happens neither in the past nor in
the future, for what exists potentially falls under the law of non-existence.
This is what the philosophers meant when they said that the circular
movements of the past and the future are non-existent. The upshot of this
question is: Everything that is called a limited aggregate with a beginning
and an end is so called either because it has a beginning and end in the
world exterior to the soul, or because it is inside, not outside, the soul.
Every totality, actual and limited in the past, whether inside or outside the
soul, is necessarily either even or uneven. But an unlimited aggregate
existing outside the soul cannot be other than limited so far as it is
represented in the soul, for the soul cannot represent unlimited existence.
Therefore also this unlimited aggregate, as being limited in the soul, can
be called even or uneven; in so far, however, as it exists outside the soul,
it can be called neither even nor uneven. Equally, past aggregates which
are considered to exist potentially outside the soul, i.e. which have no
beginning, cannot be called even or uneven unless they are looked upon
as actual, i.e. as having beginning and end. No motion possesses totality
or forms an aggregate, i.e. is provided with a beginning or an end, except
in so far as it is in the soul, as is the case with time.’ And it follows from
the nature of circular movement that it is neither even nor uneven except
as represented in the soul. The cause of this mistake is that it was
believed that, when something possesses a certain quality in the soul, it
must possess this quality also outside the soul, and, since anything that
has happened in the past can only be represented in the soul as finite, it
was thought that everything that has happened in the past must also be
finite outside the soul. And as the circular movements of the future are
regarded by the imagination as infinite, for it represents them as a
sequence of part after part, Plato and the Ash’arites believed that they
might be infinite, but this is simply a judgement based on imagination, not
on proof. Therefore those who believe-as many theologians have donethat,
if the world is supposed to have begun, it must have an end, are truer
to their principles and show more consistency.
Ghazali says after this:
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