—exalted is He—in His Book that certain bodies are neither equal nor alike, just as He has denied equality and likeness between certain accidents. Allah Most High says:

“The blind and the seeing are not equal, nor are darkness and light, nor shade and scorching heat. Nor are the living and the dead equal.”
Fātir 19–22.

He Most High says:
“Are those who know equal to those who do not know?”
al-Zumar 9.

He Most High says:
“They are not all alike.”
Āl ‘Imrān 113.

He Most High says:
“The companions of the Fire and the companions of Paradise are not equal.”
al-Hashr 20.

And He Most High says:
“If you turn away, He will replace you with another people; then they will not be like you.”
Muhammad 38.

Thus, He denied that certain bodies are like or equal to others.

If it is said, “Bodies differ because of the accidents that have accrued to them,” the reply is: Some accidents are inseparable from a kind of body or from an individual body. Thus, an animal necessarily possesses sensation and voluntary movement, and a human being necessarily possesses rationality. Likewise, an individual human being necessarily possesses his own particular sensation, capacity for voluntary movement, and rationality, as well as other individual attributes whose particular instances are shared by no other. Such an attribute cannot be incidental to him, since it is inseparable from him.

Nor can one conceive of a body devoid of all these attributes, to which they accrued only after