Hence, in their logic, they distinguished between quiddity and existence. Had they explained quiddity as what is in the mind, and existence as what is in external reality, this would have been correct and beyond dispute among rational people. This was their original conception. But they mistakenly supposed that the quiddity in the mind was identical to the existent in external reality. They therefore imagined that within this particular human being there were intelligible substances subsisting independently and distinct from this individual, such as his being a rational animal, sentient, capable of voluntary movement, and so forth.

The correct position is that these are all names for this particular individual. Each name conveys an attribute different from the attribute conveyed by another name. The concrete entity in external reality is one and the same: there are not two substances such that one is an accident inhering in the other, or the bearer of that accident. Rather, there is an essence and attributes. This has been discussed at length elsewhere.

The point here is that Ibn Sīnā and those like him could not identify Him with the existence divided into necessary and contingent. They therefore made Him absolute existence conditioned by absoluteness, or by the negation of affirmative realities, as he explained in his al-Shifā and his other works.

He himself has shown—and every rational person knows—that this cannot exist in external reality. Furthermore, if it is made absolute, conditioned by absoluteness, it cannot be described by any attribute that would distinguish it. Thus, one may not say: