كتاب الحيوان (Book of Animals)

He used to dislike the wonder expressed by people who were competing for leadership when he saw them displaying the ignorance of minor scholars, even though they had risen in their own estimation to the rank of great scholars. This is because some of them would take a piece of wood, drill into it, and say: "Where is that latent fire? Why do I not see it, when I have peeled the wood layer after layer?"

He used to say regarding latent things: For every type of them, there is a type of extraction and a method of treatment. Wood reveals its fires through friction; milk reveals its butter through churning, and its cheese is gathered with infaha rennet and various treatments. If a person wanted to extract tar from pine or pitch from cedar, he would not achieve it by cutting the wood, tasting it, or peeling it. Rather, he would kindle a fire near it; when the heat touches it, it sweats and undergoes various treatments. If a person were to mix silver and gold and smelt them into a single ingot, then wanted to separate one from the other, he could not do it by cutting or striking. The way to separate them is close and easy for goldsmiths and masters of pearls.

Abu Ishaq claimed that Arisṭāṭā Aristotle did not claim that water mixed with earth turns into earth, nor that fire mixed with water turns into water. The same applies to what exists of water in stone and of fire in earth and air. Bodies only decrease in weight and become lighter according to the amount of rarefaction and air parts within them, and they are weighed, solidified, and strengthened according to the scarcity of that within them. Anyone who says this regarding earth, water, fire, and air, and regarding what is composed of them, such as trees and other things, will not go so far as to claim that there is an accidental quality in earth that occurs. It is more appropriate that he would be unable to establish the color of water, earth, and fire as an accident.

When he speaks regarding those trees with that statement, he speaks regarding length, width, depth, squaring, triangulation, and circularity with the answer of the "proponents of bodies." It does not oblige the "proponents of accidents" [to accept] the "proponents of bodies" in their statement regarding the establishment of rest and motion. The statement regarding the movement of a stone is like the statement regarding its rest. Likewise, the "proponents of bodies" oblige everyone who claims that none of the accidents are broken, and that the body changes in taste, touch, color, and smell—while not [changing] the color of water—and in the coldness of the nature of the earth and its solidification as well.