The Awakening of the SoulIbn Tufayl, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Malik
ReligionIslamic
The Awakening of the Soul
Ibn Tufayl, Muhammad ibn 'Abd al-Malik
Islamic philosophy -- Early works to 1800; Philosophy, Arab -- Early works to 1800
The world, therefore, must necessarily have a creator that has not a
bodily substance; and as the creator is, indeed, without such a bodily
substance, it is quite impossible for us to apprehend him by any of our
senses; for we perceive nothing by the help of the five senses but
bodies or such qualities as adhere to bodies.
And since it cannot be apprehended by sense, neither can it be
comprehended by imagination. For imagination is nothing else but a
representation of the forms of things, when their bodily objects are
absent. And seeing it is not a body, we must not attribute to him any
bodily properties, the first of which is extension into length, breadth,
thickness; but he is free from that, and also from all other properties
of body that flow from it. And seeing he is the Creator of the world,
doubtless he knows whatsoever is in it, and has the sovereign command
over it. "Shall not he know, that created it? For he is most eminent in
knowledge and omniscient." (Koran.)
On the other side he saw that if he believed in the eternity of the
world, and that it was ever as it is now, and that no time of chaos
preceded it, that necessarily it would follow that motion was from
eternity also, without any period of beginning, because there could be
no rest before it whence to take its beginning.
Now, every motion necessarily requires a _mover_, and that mover is
either some power diffused in some body, to wit, either in the body of
the thing moved or else through some other body without it, or else some
other power that is not diffused or dispersed through anything at all.
Now every power diffused in any body and dispersed through it, is
divided or doubled. For example: gravity in a stone which causes it to
move downwards. For if the stone be divided into two parts, the gravity
is also divided into two parts; and if you add thereto another stone of
equal weight, the gravity is doubled. And if it were possible that the
stone grew _ad infinitum_, the gravity would also grow _ad infinitum_.
On the other hand, if the stone should grow to a certain size and remain
there, also the gravity would increase to the same extent, and no
farther.
Now it has already been demonstrated that every body must necessarily
be finite, and consequently every power inherent in a body is also
finite. If, therefore, we can find a power which produces an infinite
effect, it must needs be such a power that is not inherent in any body.
Now we find that the heaven is moved with a perpetual motion, without
any cessation at all.
Therefore, if we affirm that its motion has no beginning, it necessarily
follows that the power that moves is not inherent in its own body nor in
any other body that is without it; but proceeds from something
altogether abstract from bodies, and which can be described by no terms
applicable to bodies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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