The truth of the matter is that manufactured forms are merely accidents and properties inhering in bodies, such as silver, iron, wood, yarn, bricks, and the like. Animals, plants, and minerals, however, are substances formed through the transformation of other substances. The assertion that they share a common matter which persists as its forms change is false, just as those other thinkers’ assertion of the existence of the indivisible atom is false.

Those who maintain that, when the human body and similar things come into being, only their accidents are brought into being, and no subsisting entity is produced, are mistaken. Those who maintain that all forms are substances are also mistaken. Rather, a form may be an accident, such as a shape, and manufactured forms belong to this category.

The word “form” may also refer to the thing itself that possesses the form, such as a human being. Here, the form is a substance subsisting in its own right, not something inhering in another substance.

The noble Quran speaks of Allah Most High’s creation of substances, which are entities subsisting in their own right, alongside the properties and accidents whose coming into being we also witness. Drawing upon these as evidence for the Creator, glorified be He, and identifying them as His signs are among the matters explained by the Quran.