rational thinkers among the theologians and other groups of people reject this. Indeed, they say that it contradicts sensory experience and necessary knowledge, and regard it as akin to al-Nazzām’s assertion that bodies, too, cannot persist.

The principal argument of those who maintain that accidents cannot persist is this:

If an accident could persist, it would be impossible for it to cease to exist. For its nonexistence cannot result from the arising of a contrary: the newly arising accident can arise only when the other is nonexistent, since two contraries cannot coexist. There is no more reason to attribute the nonexistence of the other to the advent of the newly arising accident than the reverse. Nor can its nonexistence be brought about by an agent endowed with power and free choice, since nonexistence is pure negation, and an agent’s act cannot be pure negation.

This is plainly a weak argument. An accident can cease to exist through annihilation. The act of annihilation does not produce an ongoing nonexistence; rather, it brings about the nonexistence of something that previously existed, just as bringing something into existence produces the existence of something that was previously nonexistent. This is a newly occurring event that can intelligibly be the effect of an agent.

Furthermore, if the newly arising contrary is assumed to be stronger than the persisting accident, it displaces it by virtue of its greater strength. The fact that two accidents are contraries does not entail that they are equal or alike in strength and weakness.

Moreover, the agent who brings the new accident into existence makes it displace the persisting accident, rather than the reverse.

Were this the place to discuss such matters at length, it would be fitting to show that such discourse is among the most absurd forms of discourse condemned by