and the third is that whatever is inseparable from things that have a beginning must itself have a beginning—that is, whatever is never devoid of such things must itself have a beginning.

As for the first premise, which states that substance is never devoid of accidents: if they mean self-subsisting bodies to which one can point, then this premise is sound. But if by substance they mean the indivisible part—which is what they intend by the atom—then this premise is open to considerable doubt. For the existence of an indivisible substance is not self-evident, and there are sharply conflicting views concerning its existence. The discipline of speculative theology is incapable of discerning the truth among them; that belongs to the discipline of demonstration, and those versed in this discipline are very few indeed. The arguments the Ash'arīs employ to establish its existence are, for the most part, rhetorical.

Their well-known argument for this is that they say: it is among the self-evident truths that an elephant, for example, is said to be larger than an ant only because its parts outnumber those of the ant. If that is so,