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The Third Discussion

And after this Ghazali says that the philosophers have two proofs to demonstrate that the soul after once existing cannot perish. The first is that if the soul perished this could only be imagined in one of these three ways: either (1) it perishes simultaneously with the body, or (2) through an opposite which is found in it, or (3) through the power of God, the powerful. It is false that it can perish through the corruption of the body, for it is separated from the body. It is false that it can have an opposite, for a separate substance has no opposite. ‘ And it is false, as has been shown before, that the power of God can attach itself to non-being.

Now, Ghazali objecting to the philosophers answers: ‘We theologians do not admit that the soul is external to the body; besides, it is the special theory of Avicenna that the souls are numerically differentiated through the differentiation of the bodies, for that there should be one single soul in every respect and in all people brings about many impossibilities, for instance that when Zaid knows some. thing Amr should know it too, and when Amr does not know something Zaid should not know it either; and many other impossibilities follow from this assumption. ‘And Ghazali adduces against Avicenna the argument that when it is assumed that the souls are numerically differentiated through the differentiation of the bodies, then they are attached to the bodies and must necessarily perish with their decay.

The philosophers, however, can answer that it is by no means necessary that, when there exists between two things a relation of attachment and love, for instance the relation between the lover and the beloved and the relation between iron and the magnet, the destruction of the one should cause the destruction of the other. But Avicenna’s opponents may ask his partisans through what the individuation and numerical plurality of souls takes place, when they are separated from their matters, for the numerical plurality of individuals arises only through matter. He who claims the survival and the numerical plurality of souls should say that they are in a subtle matter, namely the animal warmth which emanates from the heavenly bodies, and this is a warmth which is not fire and in which there is not a principle of fire; in this warmth there are the souls which create the sublunary bodies and those which inhere in these bodies . And none of the philosophers is opposed to the theory that in the elements there is heavenly warmth and that this is the substratum for the potencies which produce animals and plants, but some of the philosophers call this potency a natural heavenly potency, whereas Galen calls it the forming power and sometimes the demiurge, saying that it seems that there exists. a wise maker of the living being who has created it and that this is apparent from anatomy, but where this maker is and what His substance is is too lofty a problem for human understanding. ‘ From this Plato proves that the soul is separated from the body, for the soul creates and forms the body, and if the body were the condition for the existence of the soul, the soul would not have created it or formed it. z This creative soul is most apparent in the animals which do not procreate, but it is also evident in the animals which do. And just as we know that the soul is something added to the natural warmth, since it is not of the nature of warmth qua warmth to produce well-ordered intelligible acts, so we know that the warmth which is in the seeds does not suffice to create and to form. And the philosophers do not disagree about the fact that there are in the elements souls creating each species of animals, plants, and minerals that exists, and that each of them needs a directing principle and preserving powers for it to come into existence and remain. And these souls are either like intermediaries between the souls of the heavenly bodies and the souls in the sensible bodies of the sublunary world, and then no doubt they have absolute dominion over these latter souls and these bodies, and from here arises the belief in the Jinn, ‘ or these souls themselves are attached to the bodies which they create according to a resemblance which exists between them, and when the bodies decay they return to their spiritual matter and to the subtle imperceptible bodies.

And there are none of the old philosophers who do not acknowledge these souls, and they only disagree as to whether they are identical with the souls in our bodies or of another kind. And as to those who accept a bestower of forms, they regard these powers as a separate intellect; but this theory is not found in any of the old philosophers, but only in some philosophers of Islam, because it belongs to their principles that the separate principles do not change their matters by transformation in respect of substance and primarily, for the cause of change is the opposite of the thing changed. s This question is one of the most difficult in philosophy, and the best explanation that can be given of this problem is that the material intellect thinks an infinite number of things in one single intelligible, and that it judges these things in a universal judgement, and that that which forms its essence is absolutely immaterial . b Therefore Aristotle praises Anaxagoras’ for having made intellect, namely an immaterial form, the prime mover, and for this reason it does not suffer any action from anything, for the cause of passivity is matter and in this respect the passive potencies are in the same position as the active, for it is the passive potencies possessing matters which accept definite things.