Page:The philosophy and theology of Averroes.djvu/98

 of them. That is the business of philosophers who are very few in number. The arguments which Asharites use are for the most part exhortative. For their famous argument on this is that they say that our first knowledge about a thing is, for instance, that an elephant is bigger than an ant, for it is accepted that the former has more particles in it than the latter. If it be so, then it is made up of particles and is not a compact whole in itself. So when the body is destroyed it changes into particles, and when composed it is composed of them. But this is wrong. For they have taken a divisible quantity as a continuous one, and then thought that that which is applicable to the divisible is also applicable to the continuous. This is true about numbers, that is, we say that a certain number is more than the other, by its containing more particles in it, that is, more units. But it cannot be true of a continuous quanti-