that are purely accidental—such as the way human beings and other animals alike need food and engage in movement, and similar matters.

As for the fourth alternative, it too is admissible: the individual members of a single species are identical in essence, yet different accidental actions befall them, so that one becomes a jurist while another is a scribe.

Second Premise. What is required for affirming the oneness of Allah, Exalted is He, is the following: it is conceivable that an essence may be the cause of an attribute, just as essences account for receptivity to a second, contingent existence; likewise, an attribute that belongs to the essence may serve as the cause of another attribute, just as the differentia is the cause of a proprium.

Third Premise. Neither the essence itself nor any of its attributes can be the cause of existence, because a cause must precede its effect in being. Were either—or both—of them the cause of existence, one of two impossibilities would follow: either the thing would precede itself in existence, or it would exist twice. Both options are patently absurd.

Accordingly, if we posit two Necessary Beings (1), then either they are distinct from one another or they are not. If they are not distinct, there are not two Necessary Beings. If they are distinct, the fourfold division returns: either (a) the point on which they agree is an inseparable accident of the point on which they differ, or (b) the reverse; or (c) the point of agreement is a separable accident vis-à-vis the point of difference, or (d) the reverse.

With respect to the first of these four possibilities, although it is conceivable in itself, it is not admissible here—for their difference would have to lie either in both existence and necessity together, or in one of the two, and in either case