his opponent to invalidate his argument through a compound objection, especially if it shows his position to be untenable on either supposition.

Suppose someone holds, as a fundamental principle, that an agent acting by choice may prefer one of two acts within his power over the other without any determining factor whatsoever, simply by virtue of possessing power or by virtue of his beginningless will. If he also posits a beginningless body possessing power and choice and capable of motion and rest, then its moving after having always been at rest would be comparable to its setting something else in motion. If it can set something else in motion simply by virtue of possessing power or by virtue of its will, the same is possible here. Nothing rules this out unless evidence establishes that a body cannot be beginningless, or that a beginningless being cannot move.

But if these people establish that a body has a beginning, or that a beginningless being cannot be set in motion, only through this argument, they cannot make either the body's having a beginning or the impossibility of a beginningless being's motion one of the argument's premises. Rather, if either conclusion depends on this argument, they have begged the question and made the very proposition to be proved an argument for proving itself. They have merely changed their expressions and gone round in circles, without moving from where they stood. Thus, someone who agrees with them and understands their discourse is left perplexed, gaining no knowledge from it. Someone who does not understand it yet agrees with them is an ignorant imitator of ignorant, misguided people who present themselves as among those most knowledgeable about the foundations of religion, speculative theology, and rational matters.

Al-Rāzī then stated, on behalf of the disputants, concerning these six arguments for the impossibility of a body's being beginningless and in motion—which were discussed above, together with the objection of