SCOT TRANSLATES AVERROES 131 



Creator. Nay more, when a man throws a stone, 

 these teachers attribute the consequent motion not 

 to the man but to the universal Agent, and thus 

 deny any true human activity. 



'There is even a more astounding corollary of 

 this doctrine; for if God can cause that which is 

 not to enter into being, He can also reduce being 

 to nothing; destruction, like generation, is God's 

 work, and Death itself has been created by 

 Him. But in our way of thinking destruction is 

 like generation. Each created thing contains in 

 itself its own corruption, which is present with it 

 potentially. In order to destroy, just as to create, 

 it is only necessary for the Agent to call this 

 potentiality into activity. We must in short 

 maintain as co-ordinate principles both the Agent 

 and these potential powers. Were one of the 

 two wanting, nothing could exist at all, or else 

 all being would reduce itself to action ; either of 

 which consequences is as absurd as the other/ 



We cannot wonder that Albertus Magnus, and 

 all who held the Christian faith, were alarmed by 

 doctrine of this kind and fiercely opposed it. The 

 orthodox beliefs of Christians, Jews, and Mo- 

 hammedans alike were declared false by this bold 

 writer, whom several expressions which we have 

 embodied in the above summary show clearly to 

 have been Averroes, and not Michael Scot. In one 

 passage indeed we seem to discover what may 

 have suggested the widely spread fable that 

 Frederick n., or Scot, or some other of their 

 company and party, had produced an atheistic 

 work called De Tribus Im.postoribus. The im- 

 putation was a false one, yet most natural were 



