so is it impossible for all the Zanj to be black? This is a matter of dispute.

The response is that there is a clear distinction between saying, “All things that come into being have a beginning,” meaning that each one has a beginning, and saying, “The kind of things that come into being has a beginning,” meaning that these things are discontinuous, neither perpetual nor continuous, and do not form a continuing succession. Reason can conceive of each one having a beginning and an end while they nevertheless continue perpetually in succession. It can therefore judge that everything that comes into being has a beginning, just as every member of the Zanj is black, without yet knowing whether these things continue perpetually or are discontinuous.

Indeed, knowing that something that comes into being has a beginning means knowing that it is preceded by nonexistence. But knowing that everything that comes into being is preceded by nonexistence does not mean knowing that nonexistence continued perpetually until the kind of things that come into being first arose. Rather, reason can conceive that there is nothing that comes into being without something else coming into being before it and after it, and no number without another number after it. It knows that everything that comes into being has a beginning, every decrease has an end, and every number has a limit and an endpoint, even though the kind comprising numbers has no limit or endpoint.

What further clarifies this distinction is that blackness and whiteness are attributes inhering in an individual while he exists. Such an attribute cannot be absent from the existing kind when we say that each of its members is black. As for a thing’s coming into being, being preceded by nonexistence, or existing