the ancients, he based his denial of the attributes and of corporeality sometimes on affirming the soul and its incorporeality, using an argument weaker than theirs, and sometimes on a verbal argument drawn from speculative theology: whatever is compounded must have someone who compounds it, and whatever is assembled must have someone who assembles it.

This holds only if the term is applied on the understanding that there is someone who performed the assembling or compounding. But against someone who does not apply this term at all, or who means by it something whose constituents are joined together and maintains that it exists necessarily in itself, such an argument has no force. This is discussed at length in its proper place.

The point here is to clarify what Ibn Sīnā took from his predecessors, what he took from the theologians, and how he mixed the two.

Ibn Rushd said:

“Abū Hāmid’s statement, ‘But its cause may itself have a cause, and the cause of that cause another cause, and so on without end,’ down to his words, ‘Every line of reasoning you have presented is invalidated by your allowing cycles with no beginning,’ raises an objection that has already been answered, when we said: ‘The philosophers do not admit causes and effects extending without end