apart from the other, this does not indicate that they are one and the same in reality.

The same applies to general and specific attributes in a single subject, such as a human being’s being an animal and rational, a body’s being a body and a plant, and a colour’s being black or white. Although one may not be distinguished from the other through certain kinds of perception, it can be distinguished through another kind.

[The Fourteenth Argument]

His statement:

“You have judged that His apprehension of His essence is a cause of His apprehension of His first effect. If, then, you judge the two causes—namely, His essence and His apprehension of His essence—to be one and the same in existence, without any distinction, then judge the two effects to be one and the same.”

The reply is:

As for His essence being a cause, this means that it originates and produces its effect.

As for His apprehension of His essence being a cause of His apprehension, this does not mean that His apprehension of His essence brings His apprehension of His effect into being. Rather, it means that His apprehension of His essence necessarily entails His apprehension of His effect. For His being its producer is a necessary concomitant of His essence, and complete knowledge of a thing entails knowledge of its necessary concomitants. Thus, being a cause here means being that which necessarily entails something, whereas there it means being its producer.

The term “cause” has many different meanings according to people’s terminological conventions. Anyone addressed using this term should therefore understand what the speaker intends by it. For I have seen instances of