There are other forms which also occur successively...

There are other forms which also occur successively concomitant with the form of corporeality in the different types of corporeal things and are capable of change, transformation, generation and corruption, such as the elemental forms, mineral forms, vegetable forms and animal forms. On the other hand, Shaykh al-Ishrāq denied the existence of hayūlā as a substance without actuality as a part of corporeal substance.

He took the form of corporeality to be the corporeal substance itself and he accepted other elemental, mineral and vegetable forms as accidents of corporeal substance.

Of the five kinds of substances posited by the Peripatetics, he accepted only three (intellectual substance, psychic substance and corporeal substance), but he also attested to another kind of existent as an intermediary between the completely immaterial and the purely material by the name of ‘immaterial phantoms’ ( ashbāḥ mujarradah ) or ‘suspended forms’ ( ṣuwar mu’allaqah ) which he later introduced in the terminology of more recent philosophers as ‘imaginal’ ( mithālī ) or ‘intermediary’ ( barzakhī ) substance.

Earlier it was mentioned that Berkeley denied the existence of corporeal substances and consequently, matter and material forms. He believed that what we perceive as material things are really forms which God the Exalted has brought into existence in our psychic world, and that their realities are psychic realities, and that there exists no material world beyond the soul.

It was also mentioned that Hume also considered psychic substance to be doubtful and announced that we can only decisively prove psychic phenomena (accidents), for these are the only things which can be directly experienced.

Corporeal Substances In Lesson Twenty-Three we proved the existence of a material reality, and it was explained that it is incorrect to imagine that the material world exists only in the psychic world and in the realm of man’s perception, for by means of presentational knowledge man finds that he does not bring sensible forms into existence himself. Hence, there is no other alternative but that they are brought about by a cause external to him which somehow influences his sensory perceptions.

The hypothesis that God the Exalted made these perceptual forms to appear in our souls without intermediary—as was held by Berkeley—is also an incorrect assumption, because the relations between an immaterial agent and all souls and all times and places are equal.