كتاب الحيوان (Book of Animals)

...that ash is an emerging entity, as they said regarding fire and smoke, then it is incumbent upon them to say the same regarding all bodies, such as flour, which differs from wheat in its color, hardness, dimensions, and other matters. They should claim that flour is an emerging entity and that the wheat has ceased to be. If one claims that, he claims that butter, which comes into existence after churning, was not in the milk, and that cheese is an emerging entity. He would compare whey to cheese, yet milk is nothing but cheese and water. If he claims they are both emerging entities and that the milk has ceased to be, he must conclude the same for pottery, which we do not find until we knead the dry, crumbling earth with flowing, wet water, then level it with intense, yellow heat. We find the pottery in essence, touch, taste, smell, and upon tapping and striking, to be different from what we found the fire alone, the water alone, and the earth alone to be. If that pottery is those things, and the firewood is those things, except that one is of the composition of servants and the other is of the composition of God—and the servant does not change compositions from their essences by composing what he composes from them—and when a stone strikes an egg, it breaks it: however the matter revolves, whether the wind moves it or a human, if they claim the pottery is not that earth, that water, and that fire, and they say the same regarding all processed foods and wines, the end of their logic is to answer with the answer of Abu al-Jahjah.

If he claims that the standing is different from the base, and the dough is different from the flour, they claim that if he did not say that, then when a seed is split, the original ceases to be and two bodies emerge in its form as halves of the seed. If it were split into four, it would lead to it becoming flour, then dough, then bread, then returning to feces and waste, then returning to basil and herbs, then returning again to milk and butter, because grazing beasts eat it, and it returns to flesh and blood. (Abu al-Jahjah said): There is no speech except what the proponents of latency say, or what this man says.

(Abu Ishaq said): If an opponent from the proponents of accidents objects to us, claiming that the fire was not latent—and how could it be latent when it is greater than it?—but that when wood rubs against wood, both pieces heat up, and the portion of air surrounding them between them heats up, and then that which follows it among them, and when it reaches heat it thins, dries, and ignites; then fire is merely air that has transmuted. Air, in its original essence, is hot and thin, and it is a thin, hollow body, good at receiving and quick to flip. The fire you see is more than the firewood; it is merely that transmuted air. Its extinction is the cessation of those accidental properties that occurred...