first mentioned, in which it means distinctness. If each of the two instances of whiteness is distinct from the other by virtue of its own particular whiteness, it is also distinct from it by virtue of its own character as a color and as an accident. The same applies to two human beings. What distinguishes each from the other necessarily accompanies the shared universal in the mind; yet that universal neither necessarily entails anything nor is necessarily entailed by anything, since one can conceive of an animal and a color in abstraction in the mind, without anything necessarily accompanying them or necessarily entailing them.

An animal existing in external reality, however, is a particular animal necessarily accompanied by something particular: a particular human being, a particular horse, or something similar. This particular accompanies that particular at all times, but does not necessarily accompany another animal. Thus, when this particular human being ceases to exist, this particular animal ceases to exist. If another animal comes into existence, it does not necessarily entail that particular human being. In short, all the necessary attributes of each individual thing existing in external reality mutually entail one another: its being human entails its being an animal, and its being an animal entails its being human.

[Continuation of Ibn Sīnā’s discussion and Ibn Taymiyya’s commentary on it]

As for the second premise, he said:

“It is possible for a thing’s essence to be the cause of one of its attributes, and for one of its attributes to be the cause of another, as when a differentia causes a distinctive property. But the attribute that constitutes the thing’s existence cannot be caused by its essence, which is not itself existence, or by