the world through the emanation of the intellect, and then of the intellect, the soul, and the celestial sphere, in terms that even the most feeble-minded person would reject. No one would consider such discourse suitable for anything but jokes and farce, let alone theology, which concerns the most momentous matters. They also raised with them the particular magnitudes, attributes, and other features of the world, asking what necessitated its having these rather than others, along with further matters that need not be discussed here. Our purpose is to answer what al-Rāzī has mentioned. This, too, resembles the preceding argument in several respects.

First, the most his argument establishes is an agent that has no counterpart. This is undisputed. Nor is it impossible according to sense perception, imagination, or reason, such that it could serve as a parallel to the point under dispute. To claim that this contradicts the judgment of sense perception and imagination is no different from claiming that it contradicts the judgment of reason and analogy.

Second, that the sequence must ultimately reach an agent that has no agent is known through innate disposition and rational necessity, just as the impossibility of an act occurring without an agent is known through innate disposition and rational necessity, and just as they have said concerning the impossibility of an existent that is neither within the world nor outside it. If this is known innately and self-evidently, how can it be set against something else that is likewise known innately and self-evidently?