if demonstration establishes the existence of a being in this direction, it must be incorporeal. Thus, contrary to what these people supposed, what cannot exist there is a corporeal being, not an incorporeal one.

Nor can they say that there is a void outside the world. The theoretical sciences establish the impossibility of a void, since the term “void” signifies nothing more than dimensions containing no body—namely, length, breadth, and depth. If these dimensions are removed from it, it reverts to nonexistence. If the void is posited as existing, this entails the existence of accidents subsisting without a body, since dimensions are necessarily accidents belonging to the category of quantity.

Yet ancient doctrines and the religious laws of bygone ages have described that region as the abode of spiritual beings, meaning Allah and the angels. Since that region is not a place, time does not encompass it. Likewise, if everything encompassed by time and place is subject to corruption, it follows that whatever is there is neither subject to corruption nor brought into being. This point becomes clear from what I shall say, for