a cause, or because its own essence has ceased to exist, or because an attribute has ceased to exist. It is impossible for it to be as it is by virtue of neither its own essence nor an attribute, for this would sever affirmation from anything affirmed, and a statement from anything about which it is made, besides entailing other untenable consequences. Nor can it be as it is because its own essence has ceased to exist and become nonexistent, for what is nonexistent is not something that can possess any attribute. Moreover, the nonexistence of its essence—if its nonexistence were possible—would no more account for its being at rest than for its being in motion. Nor can this result from the cessation of an attribute that had existed in it.

For that which is beginningless cannot cease to exist. Furthermore, it would have no greater claim to be moving because of the absence of its rest than would anything else capable of motion.

This would entail that a body moves into a particular alignment solely because its rest is absent. Were that so, the absence of that rest would give it no more reason to move into that particular alignment than to move in another direction, or to a position farther away.

Its movement in a particular direction and into a specific alignment is evidence that this must be due to an attribute other than the mere absence of its rest. Moreover, there is no greater reason for this body, rather than another, to move because rest is absent. For the absence of rest amounts to nothing more than the body’s being devoid of it—that rest is not present in it—and other bodies are likewise devoid of that rest. How, then, could its being devoid of rest necessitate motion for it rather than for every other body devoid of it?

The untenability of this demonstrates that a moving thing cannot be moving because of the absence of an attribute.