the genus of things that come into being, while being free of their individual instances. The second is that which is never free of one particular, identifiable instance. It is as though you said: “Whatever is never free of this particular blackness is material.” This second interpretation is true—I mean, that which is never free of some identifiable accident.

For an accident that comes into being necessarily requires that its substrate also have come into being. If the substrate were eternal, it would previously have been free of that accident, whereas we had assumed that it was never free of it. This is an impossible contradiction.

As for the first interpretation, which is what they intend, it does not entail that the substrate came into being. I mean the substrate that is never free of the genus of things that come into being. For it is conceivable that a single substrate—namely, a body—should undergo an endless succession of accidents, whether contrary or not contrary to one another. It is as though you said: motions without end, or motions and sulūkiyyāt without end, as many of the ancients maintain concerning