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

and then assumes a time which has no beginning-which is a selfcontradictory
assumption. It is, therefore, wrong to ascribe to an act of
imagination the fact that there is a prior event for every occurrence, for he
who denies priority denies the event in time. The contrary is the case with
the man who denies the real character of the high, for he denies the
absolutely high and, when he denies the absolutely high, he denies also
the absolutely low,’ and when these two are denied, also the heavy and
the light are denied’, and the act of the imagination that a body with
straight dimensions must end in another body is not false; no, this is a
necessary truth, for the body with straight dimensions has the possibility of
increasing, and what has this possibility is not limited by nature. Therefore
the body with straight surfaces must end in the circumscribing circular
body, since this is the perfect body which is liable neither to increase nor
to decrease. Therefore when the mind seeks to imagine that the circular
body must end in another body, it imagines the impossible. These are all
matters of which the theologians and those who do not start their inquiry in
the proper scientific order are unaware.
Further, the relation between time and motion is not the same as that
between spatial limit and spatial magnitude, for the spatial limit is an
attribute of spatial magnitude, in so far as it inheres in it, in the way that
the accident inheres in its substratum and is individualized by the
individuality of its substratum and is indicated by pointing at its substratum
and by its being in the place in which its substratum is. But this is not the
case with the necessary relation between time and motion. For the
dependence of time on motion is much like the dependence of number on
the thing numbered: just as number does not become individualized
through tire individuation of the thing numbered, nor pluralized through its
plurality, so it stands with the relation between time and movement. Time,
therefore, is unique for all movement and for each thing moving, and
exists everywhere, so that if we should suppose people confined from
youth in a cave in the earth, still we should be sure that they would
perceive time, even if they did not perceive any of the movements which
are perceived in the world. Aristotle therefore thought that the existence of
movements in time is much like the existence of the things numbered in
numbers for number is not pluralized through the plurality of the things
numbered, nor is it localized through the individuation of the places
numbered. He thought, therefore, that its specific quality was to mesaure
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