one that is bare and devoid of any common basis. For the claimant contends that an act of the Lord, Most High, need not be preceded by nonexistence, just as His attributes are inseparable from His Essence without being preceded by nonexistence. He framed this as a syllogism of inclusion, saying:

“Causal influence need not be preceded by nonexistence.”

It is said to him: We do not concede that the two share a common element of the kind suggested by your wording. Indeed, we do not concede that they share any common element peculiar to them. Rather, the commonality between them extends to every necessary concomitant in relation to that which entails it. He would therefore be forced to regard every necessary concomitant as an effect produced by that which entails it. Even if we concede that the two share a common element, we do not concede that it is the ground of the judgment in the original case, such that the analogical branch may be assimilated to it.

If he advances this as a universal claim and frames it as a syllogism (1) of inclusion, he is told: A universal claim cannot be established by a particular example. Grant that what you mentioned in the original case is one instance of this universal proposition; why do you maintain that all its other instances are likewise? At most, you can revert to analogical reasoning, yet you have no proof of its validity here. We shall then point out the numerous material distinctions. This response thus comprises several distinct lines of reply.

[The Eighth Proof and Its Refutation]

Al-Rāzī said:

“The eighth proof: The necessary concomitants of a quiddity are caused by it, yet they are not temporally posterior to it. The fact that a triangle’s angles equal two right angles is due solely to its being a triangle, and this necessitation (2) is one of the triangle’s necessary concomitants (3). We may go further and say: causes are concurrent—