silent thing is still, but not every still thing is silent. When anger is described as becoming still, this indicates that it had been moving. This is a description of the soul’s states in terms of motion and stillness. Al-Ashʿarī argued that motion and its various kinds are not confined to bodies, citing people’s use of such expressions for accidents. He said:
“They say: ‘Fever has come,’ ‘Cold has come,’ ‘Health has come,’ ‘Winter has come,’ and ‘Heat has come,’ and similar expressions in which accidents are described as coming or arriving. The coming of these accidents consists in their arising, in change, and in a transition from one state to another.”
If it is said:
These accidents are described in terms of motion and stillness only because the substrate bearing the accident moves. Otherwise, an accident neither subsists independently nor leaves its substrate. Fever, heat and cold inhere in the air that carries heat and cold. Likewise, anger is the boiling of the heart’s blood in pursuit of revenge, and this is the movement of blood. When the boiling of the blood subsides, anger subsides.
The reply is:
That is not so. Rather, such language is used for accidents that arise gradually in a substrate, even when no body moves along with them, as discussed earlier regarding motion in qualities and attributes. When water grows hot, heat arises in it, and it heats the vessel containing it without any hot body passing into that vessel. When heated water is placed somewhere cold, it cools without any cold body passing into it. Likewise, fever is heat or cold inhering in the body without there passing into each part