the eternity of accidents, are binding only upon those who maintain that even the accidents perceived as coming into being are eternal. I mean those who hold that no accidents come into being.

For they say that if the accidents which appear to the senses to come into being do not actually come into being, they must either move from one substrate to another or have been latent in the substrate in which they appeared before becoming apparent.

They then refute these two alternatives and suppose that they have demonstrated the coming into being of all accidents, though not of those whose status is uncertain, such as the accidents found in the heavenly bodies—their motions, shapes, and so forth. Thus, their arguments for the coming into being of all accidents ultimately amount to inferring the unobservable by analogy with the observable. This is a rhetorical argument, except where the inference is rationally evident in itself, namely, when it is known with certainty that the observable and the unobservable have the same nature.

As for the third premise, which states, “Whatever is never free of things that come into being must itself have come into being,” it is an equivocal premise, since it can be understood in two senses. The first is that which is never free of