against his statement:

“Corporeal forms and spatial configurations can be perceived only by a corporeal faculty.”

Abū al-Barakāt again challenged him on this.

I say:

Abū al-Barakāt’s point is correct: an intellective subject is not constituted by what it apprehends, and to suppose otherwise is impossible, because its intellection depends upon its essence and is posterior to it in the order of essence. How, then, could existence be constituted by something posterior to existence in that same order?

This holds consistently for all attributes inseparable from the subject they qualify: its essence is not constituted by any of them, nor is an attribute of the subject a constituent part essentially prior to it. Since the attribute depends upon the subject, it is more fitting that it should be essentially posterior to it than essentially prior to it.

Thus, if we suppose that there is a conceptual ordering in which an essential attribute is either prior or posterior to its subject, it can only be posterior to it.

If, on the other hand, it is said that there is no ordering here at all, but that each inseparably accompanies the other and is conjoined with it, then neither precedes the other. There is no conceptual ordering between them, just as there is no temporal ordering: neither is prior to the other. Rather, the subject and its inseparable attribute exist together, neither having preceded the other, whether