as meaning the Ash'arites. From the ninth century onward, owing to Caliph al-Ma'mun and his successor, Greek philosophy was introduced among the Arabs, and the Peripatetic school began to find able representatives among them; such were Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Roshd, all of whose fundamental principles were considered as heresies by the Motekallamin. Argument for Creation against the Peripatetics Aristotle, the prince of the philosophers, demonstrated the necessary existence of the unmoved mover, and therefore the unity of God, but from the view which he maintained, that matter was eternal, it followed that God could not be the Creator of the world. Again, to assert, as the Peripatetics did, that God's knowledge extends only to the general laws of the universe, and not to individual and accidental things, is tantamount to giving denial to prophecy. One other point shocked the faith of the Motekallamin—the theory of the intellect. The Peripatetics taught that the human soul was only an aptitude—a faculty capable of attaining every variety of passive perfection—and that through information and virtue it became qualified for union with the active intellect, which latter emanates from God. To admit this theory would be to deny the immortality of the soul (see Alexander of Aphrodisias). Wherefore the Motekallamin had, before anything else, to establish a system of philosophy to demonstrate the creation of matter, and they adopted to that end the theory of atoms as enunciated by Democritus. They taught that atoms possess neither quantity nor extension. Originally atoms were created by God, and are created now as occasion seems to require. Bodies come into existence or die, through the aggregation or the sunderance of these atoms. But this theory did not remove the objections of philosophy to a creation of matter. For, indeed, if it be supposed that God commenced His work at a certain definite time by His "will," and for a certain definite object, it must be admitted that He was imperfect before accomplishing His will, or before attaining His object. In order to obviate this difficulty, the Motekallamin extended their theory of the atoms to Time, and claimed that just as Space is constituted of atoms and vacuum, Time, likewise, is constituted of small indivisible moments. The creation of the world once established, it was an easy matter for them to demonstrate the existence of a Creator, and that He is unique, omnipotent, and omniscient.