benefit even when correct, and can be attained only with much toil. Yet he says: “This is the utmost reach of our philosophy and the pinnacle of our wisdom.”

It is, as has been said:
“Lean camel meat atop a rugged mountain: neither is the climb easy, nor is the meat fat enough to carry away.”

The substance of what Ibn Rushd has said concerning the establishment of that which has necessary existence is this: what has contingent existence—which, in the terminology he attributes to the ancients, means what comes into being after not existing—must be preceded by that which has necessary existence, namely, that which is eternal and was never preceded by nonexistence. This is precisely the speculative theologian’s assertion that whatever comes into being requires something eternal.

He then said:
“What has necessary existence as a corporeal substance must be preceded by that which has necessary existence absolutely: that which has no potentiality whatsoever and is not a body.”

He has offered no sound proof for this.

His statement that “the celestial sphere appears to have necessary existence”—meaning that it is eternal in its substance—“and to have contingent existence with respect to motion” is the doctrine of the eternalist philosophers, who say that the celestial spheres are eternal and their motion perpetual.

There is no proof for this whatsoever. Rather, all the proofs they adduce for