You may be told: “This division is self-evident for everything that exists in its own right, just as you stated that it is self-evident for everything you call something that occupies space—the space it occupies being sheer nonexistence. For if the only alternatives are a change of location and no change of location, then a change of location is motion, and its absence is rest.”

If you say, “These two are opposed as privation and possession, so there must be a capacity for them,” there are several answers:

First: The same may be said of what you call something that occupies space.

Second: This is a convention you have adopted. Otherwise, everything that is not moving and exists in its own right is at rest, just as everything that is not alive is dead.

Third: Suppose that this is so. Nevertheless, when we consider existing things, whatever has the capacity for motion is more perfect than whatever lacks that capacity. If the absence of motion in something capable of it is an imperfection, then lacking the capacity for motion is an even greater imperfection, as we have explained in a similar discussion concerning attributes.