and the possibility of combination and separation occurring in them, or of some replacing others. Yet they do not combine or separate by their own essence, for what their essence entails does not change. There must therefore be an agent that combines and separates them.’”

He said:

“The teacher Abū Ishāq al-Isfarāyīnī adopted this approach and recast it in different terms.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s comment]

I said:

This approach was intended only to establish the impossibility of all substances being beginningless. It therefore rests on establishing the existence of the indivisible atom, so that the possibility of substances combining and separating can be posited.

Otherwise, if it is maintained that some bodies are intrinsically one, or that every homogeneous body is intrinsically one, or that a body is composed of matter and form, separation does not necessarily follow in something that is intrinsically one. Nor does the opponent concede that every body can be separated. He therefore rejects the statement: