then these can only be attained through rational propositions that must be accepted; indeed, they occur only in propositions whose modality is necessity, such as “Every human being is an animal” and “Every existent is either necessary or contingent,” and other universal propositions that admit no change.

For this reason, the sciences are ‘three’: one concerns what cannot be abstracted from matter, either in the mind or in external reality. This is ‘physics’, whose subject is body. Another concerns what is abstracted from matter in the mind but not in external reality. This is ‘mathematics’, which discusses magnitude and number. The remaining science concerns what is abstracted from matter. This is ‘metaphysics’, whose subject is absolute existence and the attributes that belong to it insofar as it is existence, such as its division into necessary and contingent, and into substance and accident.

Substance is divided into that which inheres in something; that which serves as a substrate; that which neither inheres in something nor serves as a substrate, but is related to these through governance; and that which neither inheres in something nor serves as a substrate, nor has such a relation to them. (The first) is form. (The second) is matter—that is, hylē, which in their language means ‘substrate’. (The third) is the soul. (The fourth) is the intellect.

(The First) is classified by most of them under the category of substance. However, some of their later thinkers, such as Ibn Sīnā, refused to call it a substance. They said that substance is that which, if it exists, exists not in a subject—that is, not in a substrate independent of what inheres in it. This applies only to that whose existence differs from its essence. The First is not like this, and therefore is not a substance. This is one of the matters in which