in external reality. Rather, this mental ordering is like the ordering of speech, as explained earlier. The existence of the Creator, exalted is He, is real and external, not merely mental.

The same applies to their other example: one motion arising from another, as when someone says, “I moved my hand, and my ring or sleeve moved.” This falls into the same category. The movement of the hand alone is not a complete cause of the movement of the ring or sleeve. Rather, the very existence of the locus of motion—the ring or sleeve—is a condition or cause of the motion’s existence. Motion depends on the locus in which it inheres, just as it depends on the cause that calls it forth.

Since this motion depends on two or more things, the account of its occurrence together with the movement of the hand is the same as that of motion and sound: either they are said to coincide in time, in which case neither is a cause of the other, even if it is a condition that coincides with it; or else