or if he takes the two together to denote what is actually established outside the mind—or, conversely, to denote only what is conceived within it—and then claims that there are in the mind two distinct items, a quiddity and its existence, or that outside the mind there are likewise two, a quiddity and its existence, he has fallen into error.

Once this distinction is made, the confusion and debate about whether the quiddity is other than its existence disappear. Whoever neglects it will either be bewildered and come to a halt, as did al-Āmidī and those of his stripe; or his discourse will fluctuate and contradict itself, like al-Rāzī and his ilk; or he will obstinately cling to falsehood when championing one of the two views, as happens with certain theologians and philosophers.

The purpose here is to point out the root of their mistake: they imagine that what is in the mind exists, identically, in the external world. They made the same assumption about universals—regarding them either as separate entities, in the fashion of their early predecessors among the upholders of the Platonic Forms and the Pythagoreans, or as inseparable from concrete things, in the view of their later followers, the Peripatetics.

Hence, of all the immaterial entities they claim to be detached from matter, none can actually be conceded to them except the human soul once it has left the body, for at death it truly is separated from the body. Their labeling of anything else as “immaterial” and “separate from matter” rests solely on this misunderstanding.

Accordingly, the ten separate movers they posit—“intellects” that are neither bodies nor connected to any body (they call body “matter” and say these intellects are “neither in matter nor attached to it”)—and likewise the nine celestial souls, which they say are in no body or matter yet are related to the body that is matter by way of governance and administration, all fall under this same unfounded assumption.