the evidence establishes the contrary. Thus, since there is no difference between them in reality, those who distinguish between them have supplied no definition that separates them. Rather, the criteria they have proposed fail under counterexamples, as explained at length elsewhere. If the two attributes invariably accompany one another in existence and nonexistence, affirmation and negation—so that one exists only with the other, and when one is absent, the other is absent—then treating one as constitutive and the other as accidental is arbitrary.

Furthermore, if it is said, “The essence is composed of essential attributes, and essential attributes are those without which the essence cannot be conceived,” then the essence would be known only through the essential attributes, and the essential attributes only through the essence.

Moreover, this rests on the assumption that a thing’s external existence is something additional to its externally existing essence. This, too, is a false and weak claim.

Furthermore, consider a self-subsisting entity existing externally, such as this one and a human being. If it is said, “It is composed of two accidents,” it follows that a substance is composed of two accidents and that both precede it. This is self-evidently impossible.

If it is said, “It is composed of two substances, each of which is predicated of it, as when one says, ‘It is a rational animal,’” it follows that there are two substances within it: one an animal, and the other rational. This is a willful denial of sense perception and reason, for it is a single animal described as rational.