the essence in respect of its limit. If you say that another attribute could exist, what necessitates confinement to this number and limit, such that a determining cause is needed to impose that restriction?’”

Then he said: “We reply: Magnitudes, insofar as they are magnitudes of length, breadth, and depth, do not differ, whether seen or unseen, in being rationally contingent and requiring a determining cause.”

He may be told: What you have said is precisely the point at issue. Magnitudes as such have no existence in external reality, just as attributes and essences as such have no existence in external reality. What exists in external reality is only a particular essence with its particular attributes. The reasoning concerning its particular magnitude is the same as that concerning its other particular attributes, in relation to the reality characterized by those attributes.

Then he said: “As for the attributes and their restriction to eight, our fellow scholars have offered various answers concerning this. One is that they rejected the use of the term