Thus, if you say, “Blackness is composed of being a colour and being black,” just as you say, “The existent being is composed of animality and rationality,” you will be asked:

Do you mean that it is composed of unrestricted colour that is not peculiar to it and blackness that is peculiar to it; of unrestricted existence that is not peculiar to it and necessity that is peculiar to it; and of unrestricted animality that is not peculiar to it and rationality that is peculiar to it? Or is it composed of its own particular colour and blackness, its own particular existence and necessity, and the animality peculiar to it and its rationality?

The first interpretation is false, for there is nothing unrestricted in it: neither unrestricted colour, nor unrestricted animality, nor unrestricted existence.

If you mean the second, then its particular colour and its blackness are inseparable, as are its particular animality and its rationality, and likewise its particular existence and its necessity. Just as this particular colour, which is black, cannot be conceived without blackness, so this particular animal, which is rational, cannot be conceived without rationality, and this particular existent being, which is necessary, cannot be conceived without existence. For this animal is the particular animal, and the necessary being is the particular existent being. In external reality, blackness is not distinct from colour, just as the rational being is not distinct from the animal, nor