ColoJiel WiLK^ Extracts from tlie Akhlak e Ndseri, 515 



2d. That it is an essence. 



3d. That it is simple. 



4th. That it is neither matter nor material. 



5th. That it conceives by itself, and operates by means of organs or 

 instruments. 



6th. That it is not perceived by any of the senses. 



Now for proof of the first, viz. the existence of the soul, no argument 

 is necessary, its existence and identity being the most evident and obvious 

 of all things to a rational man ; inasmuch as, asleep or awake, sober or 

 intoxicated, a man may forget all things except his own being. Now in 

 what form shall any man produce an argument of his own being ? for the 

 nature of an argument is to be a medium which shall lead the prover to his 

 proof. Now, if an argument be made use of to establish the existence of 

 one's own being, the argument is a medium between a thing and itself; 

 ergo, to argue the existence of self is absurd and impossible. 



For proof of the second, viz. that it is an essence. 



Every entity, except the Almighty, the self-existing, is either an essence 

 or an accident : which may be thus illustrated. Every entity either exists 

 of itself, or dependent on some other entity which exists independently : 

 as whiteness and blackness, which are accidents or properties of a body ; 

 and the figure of a chair, which is dependent on the existence of the 

 wood. For if the body did not exist, there could be no blackness ; and 

 if the wood, or some substitute for it, did not exist, there would be no 

 figure of a chair. And such entities are called accidents. For were not 

 tliis the case, they must have existed of themselves, without any depen- 

 dence on other independent things ; like body and wood, above exempli- 

 fied, which are called essences. 



This distinction being established, we affirm that the mind, or distinctive 

 nature of man, cannot be an accident : for it is the nature of accident 

 to be borne and received by some other thing, independent in itself, so as 

 to admit of its bearing and I'eceiving that accident ; but the mind of man 

 bears and receives ideas of external images and intellectual inferences, and 

 both image and inference exist together in the mind, and are again oblite- 

 rated, a property which is repugnant to accident 



Tlie soul, therefore, cannot be an accident. Now it having been proved 

 that every entity is either an essence or an accident, it follows tliat the 

 soul is an essence : q. e. d. 



