[69:1] Martin Schreiner: Zur Geschichte des Ash‘aritenthums. (Huitième Congrès International des Orientalistes II{me} Partie 1893, p. 113). (2). Every contingent being needs a cause to account for its existence. The Universe is contingent; therefore it must have a cause; and that cause is God. That the Universe is contingent, they proved in the following manner. All that exists in the Universe, is either substance or quality. The contingence of quality is evident, and the contingence of substance follows from the fact that no substance could exist apart from qualities. The contingence of quality necessitates the contingence of substance; otherwise the eternity of substance would necessitate the eternity of quality. In order fully to appreciate the value of this argument, it is necessary to understand the As̱ẖ‘arite theory of knowledge. To answer the question, "What is a thing?" they subjected to a searching criticism the Aristotelian categories of thought, and arrived at the conclusion that bodies have no properties in themselves[70:1]. They made no distinction of secondary and primary qualities of a body, and reduced all of them to purely subjective relations. Quality too became with them a mere accident without which the substance could not exist. They used the word substance or atom with a vague implication of externality; but their criticism, actuated by a pious desire to defend the idea of divine creation, reduced the Universe to a mere show of ordered subjectivities which, as they maintained like Berkeley, found their ultimate explanation in the Will of God. In his examination of human knowledge regarded as a product and not merely a process, Kant stopped at the idea of "Ding an sich", but the As̱ẖ‘arite endeavoured to penetrate further, and maintained, against the contemporary Agnostic-Realism, that the so called underlying essence existed only in so far as it was brought in relation to the knowing subject. Their atomism, therefore, approaches that of Lotze[71:1] who, in spite of his desire to save external reality, ended in its complete reduction to ideality. But like Lotze they could not believe their atoms to be the inner working of the Infinite Primal Being. The interest of pure monotheism was too strong for them. The necessary consequence of their analysis of matter is a thorough going idealism like that of Berkeley; but perhaps their instinctive realism combined with the force of atomistic tradition, still compels them to use the word "atom" by which they endeavour to give something like a realistic coloring to their idealism. The interest of dogmatic theology drove them to maintain towards pure Philosophy an attitude of criticism which taught her unwilling advocates how to philosophise and build a metaphysics of their own. [70:1] See Macdonald's admirable account of the As̱ẖ‘arite Metaphysics: Muslim Theology p. 201 sq. See also Maulānā S̱ẖiblī ‘Ilmal Kalām pp. 60, 72.