someone who also denies these notions, although he is misguided in denying them. Likewise, someone who denies life, knowledge, and power is misguided in denying them.

If it is said, “An act can only proceed from an essence that is self-subsisting and eternal without beginning,” the reply is: “And it can only proceed from an essence that is living, knowing, and capable.”

If it is said, “Some rational people can conceive of this essence as an agent without these attributes,” the reply is: “This is a false conception, and false conceptions have no bounds.”

Another misguided person might conceive of it as an agent without its being self-subsisting. For if the distinction rests on people’s beliefs rather than on realities existing outside the mind, it would be a mental, conceptual distinction, not a real one—like the logicians’ distinction between a constitutive essential attribute and a necessary accidental attribute. Their distinction comes down to this, since they define an essential attribute as one without conceiving which the quiddity cannot be conceived, and an accidental attribute as one without conceiving which it can be conceived. This is not a distinction in reality itself; rather, it rests on what minds posit. For every conception admits of a more complete conception. If “conception” means mere awareness of a thing, then one can be aware of it without the attributes they classify as essential. Someone may be aware of a human being without it occurring to him that a human being is a rational animal, or a growing, sentient body that moves voluntarily and is rational.

If, however, they mean complete conception, then saying “a rational animal” does not entail