an accident, whereas the sun and the face are bodies. Likewise, knowledge in the heart is an accident, whereas independently existing objects of knowledge, such as the heavens and the earth, are substances. The one is therefore not like the other.

In short, our sole purpose here is to establish that knowledge subsists in the knower, for this is the point under discussion. Everyone distinguishes between being aware of something and being unaware of it.

Whether this occurs through the impression of an intellectual form that corresponds to or resembles its object, or in some other way, is not the issue here. The point is that this knowledge is what is called the intellectual form, and it inheres in the knower.

This is not the form that exists externally. Nor is the agent of the former the agent of the latter, or the recipient of the former the recipient of the latter. For knowledge is in his heart—the knower’s heart—and is thus an attribute subsisting in the knower. Its agent is whatever brings it into being within him.

Allah’s eternal knowledge, inseparable from His essence, subsists in Him and has no agent, although there is One who is characterized by it and who is termed a locus and a recipient.

As for the form existing externally, Allah, glorified is He, is its Creator.

A human being may play a part in producing certain forms. If a form is an accident, its locus is the body in which it subsists. Thus, the locus of goldsmithing is gold and silver; the locus of carpentry is wood; the locus of the forms of dirhams, dinars, and rings is gold and silver; the locus of sewing is cloth; and the locus of weaving is yarn, and so forth.