of it, as with the terms “created,” “brought into being,” and “contingent.” In other cases, the word denoting the many takes a plural form that is not used for an individual member.

The Zanj do not constitute a totality that can be described by the singular term “black” or “not black.” Rather, one says, “Taken together, they are black,” using the plural form. This means the same as saying, “Each one of them is black.” Yet the totality as such is described as black, just as each individual is.

This is unlike describing the totality as brought into being, contingent, and dependent upon something other than itself: these attributes can apply to the totality as such, just as they apply to each of its individual members.

When the totality of things that come into being is judged to have a beginning or to have no beginning, this is a judgment concerning the kind taken as a whole. If it is known that this kind cannot be perpetual and continuous, but must follow nonexistence, just as each of its individual members is known to do, then this would be analogous to the case of what is brought into being and what is contingent. But this is precisely what is disputed.

For if we present to reason that which is brought into being from nonexistence, considered in itself and without regard to its individual instances or their totality, and ask, “Is it created and contingent?” reason judges with certainty that whatever is created and brought into being must, by virtue of being brought into being, be contingent. Otherwise, it would have to be either necessary in existence, and thus could not be nonexistent, or impossible in existence, and thus could not exist.

That which is brought into being was nonexistent and then came to exist. Its nature is therefore incompatible with both necessary and impossible existence. In this there is no difference between the individual and the kind.