Although this claim is known to be false on many grounds, as explained at length elsewhere, the point here is that nothing in existence is the simple One they describe: stripped of all affirmative attributes and described only through negations and relations. Rather, this One has no reality.

Moreover, no single thing is known to exist from which anything proceeds through its agency alone. The examples they offer—that fire produces only burning and heating, that water produces only cooling, that rays proceed from the sun, and the like—are all arguments against them. These effects do not proceed merely from these bodies and their natures. Rather, heating and burning require two things:

First: fire, rays, or motion, for these three are among the causes of heat.

Second: a subject capable of receiving that effect, such as the body of an animal or a plant, and the like. Otherwise, fire does not burn salamanders, yāqūt (gemstones), and similar things, because they lack the capacity to receive that effect.

Likewise, rays require a surface capable of reflecting them; if no body capable of receiving them is present, no rays arise.

These heretics say that the First, the Necessary Being, whom