Some curiosity may be felt with regard to the doctrine contained in the _Quaestiones Nicolai Peripatetici_ which gave ground for such adverse opinions. M. Renan’s _résumé_ of this treatise is clear and sufficient,[180] and we may reproduce it here, as it will afford a useful supplement to the account already given of the philosophy of Averroës. ‘As to the origin of the different kinds of being,’ says Averroës, ‘there are two exactly opposite opinions, as well as others occupying an intermediate position. The one explains the world by a theory of development, the other by creation. Those who hold the former say that generation is nothing but the outcome and in a sense the multiplication of being; the Agent, according to this hypothesis, doing no more than extricate being from being and make a distinction between them,[181] so that the Agent, thus conceived, has the function of a mere motive power. As to those who hold the hypothesis of creation, they say that the Agent produces being without having any recourse to pre-existent matter. This is the view taken by our _Motecallemin_, and by the followers of the Christian religion: for example, by Johannes Christianus (Philopon), who asserts that the possibility of creation lies in the Agent alone.’ ‘The intermediate views may be reduced to two only, though the first of these admits several subdivisions which show considerable differences. These opinions agree in affirming that generation is only a change of substance; that all generation implies a subject; and that everything begets in its own likeness. The first opinion asserts, however, that the part of the Agent is to create form, and to impress it upon already existent matter. Some of those who hold this view, as Ibn Sina,[182] make an entire separation between matter in generation and the Agent, calling the latter the _source of form_, while others, among whom we may notice Themistius and perhaps Alfarabi, maintain that the Agent is in some cases conjoined with matter, as when fire produces fire, or man begets man; and in others separate from it, as in the generation of creeping things and plants, _i.e._ those not produced from seed,[183] which all owe their being to causes that are unlike themselves.’