and the originated, so too His having no limit to His essence and attributes—if that is indeed the case—does not prevent His inclusion in the division into the independent and the dependent. This is further clarified by the fact that the first division relates to duration and time just as the second relates to space and place. The eternal is not bounded by times, just as the independent is not contained by places.

These people then said: “The originated existent that has no need of a substrate is a substance in the terminology of the theologians, while that which depends on a substrate is an accident. The term ‘universe’ encompasses both categories.”

Now, when a group of Muʿtazilī theologians affirmed accidents without a substrate, such as will, aversion, and annihilation, all other rational people agreed that this departed from what reason can conceive, because they had affirmed something that neither subsists independently nor exists in a substrate. The same applies to anyone who affirms something self-subsisting that is not separate from other things. For the intellect’s knowledge of the impossibility of