I say:

What he reports of them here—that, according to them, whatever is contingent must be originated and composite—he has mentioned in several places. He also reports that, in their view, the celestial spheres are not composed of matter and form as elemental bodies and generated beings are, and that the claim that every body is composed of matter and form belongs to Ibn Sīnā, not to the ancients. Likewise, he reports that the claim that an intellect emanated from the First, then another intellect, a soul, and a celestial sphere emanated from that intellect, and so on down to the Active Intellect, is not the view of the ancients, but that of Ibn Sīnā and others like him.

He likewise states that what Ibn Sīnā and his followers say concerning revelation and dreams—namely, that they occur because the celestial soul knows the events of the world, so that when human souls connect with it, knowledge flows into them from it—is not the view of the ancients, but that of Ibn Sīnā and others like him. Yet, despite this, what he reports of the ancients and their methods is far weaker than Ibn Sīnā’s position.

Most of what he says about the Necessary Existent amounts to its being a condition for the existence of other things. As for its being a complete cause of other things, their lord and their creator, as Ibn Sīnā and others like him maintain, no substantiation of this is to be found in his account of the ancients. Thus, if Ibn Sīnā’s method entails that originated things came into being without an originator, then the method of those earlier philosophers entails that