these things, although the locus may lack the capacity to accommodate them, just as a person’s heart may be unable to accommodate many such things together, even though as many of them may coexist within it as its capacity allows.

Hearts also differ in their very constitution. Thus, some people can read while performing actions with their hands and feet, whereas others cannot. Likewise, one person can make strong, vigorous movements while another cannot; and one can see and hear various things that another cannot see or hear.

That being so, the discussion of sound concerns two matters:

The first concerns its persistence and beginninglessness, as with the persistence and beginninglessness of motion. There is no doubt that sound and motion can persist as kinds, in the sense that motion and sound occur successively, as in the motion of the celestial sphere and the stars.

As for whether sound and motion can be beginningless as kinds, speculative thinkers hold two well-known views. The Jahmiyyah, the Muʿtazilah, and their followers deny this possibility, while many leading scholars of hadith, jurisprudence, and Sufism, as well as philosophers, allow it. Some of them allow sound, but not motion, to be beginningless as a kind.

As for the persistence of a particular sound or a particular motion, most rational thinkers hold both its persistence and its beginninglessness to be impossible. Indeed, beginninglessness is all the more impossible for something that cannot persist, for whatever must be beginningless