On the other vexed question of free-will, or, rather, as the Muslims chose to express it, on the ability of men to produce actions, he took up a mediating position. The old orthodox position was absolutely fatalistic; the Mu‘tazilites, following their principle of Justice, gave to man an initiative power. Al-Ash‘ari struck a middle path. Man cannot create anything; God is the only creator. Nor does man’s power produce any effect on his actions at all. God creates in His creature power (_qudra_) and choice (_ikhtiyar_). Then He creates in him his action corresponding to the power and choice thus created. So the action of the creature is created by God as to initiative and as to production; but it is _acquired_ by the creature. By acquisition (_kasb_) is meant that it corresponds to the creature’s power and choice, previously created in him, without his having had the slightest effect on the action. He was only the _locus_ or subject of the action. In this way al-Ash‘ari is supposed to have accounted for free-will and entailed responsibility upon men. It may be doubted whether the second point occupied him much. It was open to his God to do good or evil as He chose; the Justice of the Mu‘tazilites was left behind. He may have intended only to explain the consciousness of freedom, as some have done more recently. The closeness with which al-Ash‘ari in this comes to the pre-established harmony of Leibnitz and to the Kantian conception of existence shows how high a rank he must take as an original thinker. His abandoning of the Mu‘tazilites was due to no mere wave of sentiment but to a perception that their speculations were on too narrow a basis and of a too barren scholastic type. He died after 320 with a curse on them and their methods as his last words. [Sidenote: AL-MATARIDI] A few words only need be given to al-Mataridi. The creed of an-Nasafi in the Appendix of Creeds, pp. 308-315 belongs to his school. He and at-Tahawi were followers of the broad-minded Abu Hanifa, who was more than suspected of Mu‘tazilite and Murji’ite leanings. Muslim theologians usually reckon up some thirteen points of difference between al-Mataridi and al-Ash‘ari and admit that seven of these are not much more than combats of words. Those which occur in an-Nasafi’s creed are marked with a star.