—one of its attributes.
– Among them are groups from the philosophers who ascribed to the soul qualities that can belong only to what is impossible in existence. They said: It is neither inside the body nor outside it; it neither interpenetrates it nor is separate from it; it is neither in motion nor at rest; it neither rises nor descends; it is neither substance nor accident. Some even claim that it is neither inside the universe nor outside it, neither distinct from it nor mingled with it—the very same description they give of the Necessary Existent, the Creator.
– If someone says to them, “Reason, by immediate intuition, judges such a claim impossible,” they answer, “On the contrary, it is possible, for universals (kulliyyāt) are possible and do exist, yet they cannot be pointed to.” They have failed to notice that universals exist as such only in the mind, not in concrete reality; the mind can picture things in imagination that can never exist outside it, such as the removal of two contradictory qualities at once or their simultaneous combination—both of which are impossible.
Know that the confusion of both the theologians and the philosophers concerning the soul is extensive and rests on two causes:
First: their scant share of what revelation has brought regarding its attributes.
Second: their lack of any observable counterpart for it, for the soul is neither of the same genus as this body nor of the elements and the compounds that arise from them; rather, it belongs to an altogether different genus.
Thus, the philosophers defined it in a way that necessitates its utter contrariety to tangible bodies, while the scholastic theologians classified it among those very tangible bodies.
Accordingly, the path of the philosophers leads to negation (taʿṭīl), whereas the path of the theologians leads to assimilation (tashbīh), and both paths are erroneous.
It is soundly reported from the Prophet ﷺ that when the soul is taken, the eye follows it, and that the angels