from its spatial position is motion.”

One might say:

This implies that bodies as a kind may admit motion. If, however, rest is assumed to be a positive reality with a cause that necessarily entails it, motion would be impossible because of some other factor peculiar to the particular body and absent from other bodies. Thus, if rest is assumed to have existed from eternity, it does not follow that it can cease to exist. Rather, this combines two contradictory assumptions: whatever is assumed to have existed from eternity cannot cease to exist under any circumstances. Two contradictory assumptions cannot be combined, and the capacity of every body for motion does not require this.

If it is said:

“Rest is the absence of motion,”

then, even if rest has existed from eternity, motion can be affirmed in a way that would not be possible if rest were assumed to be a positive reality. In that case, motion depends only on the presence of what brings it about and the absence of anything preventing it. There is no positively existent reality that has existed from eternity and must cease to exist.

Someone raised a powerful objection to his argument that rest is a positive reality, saying:

This is open to question because the premise of the proof contradicts what it seeks to establish. The aim is to establish that both are positive realities, whereas the premise of the proof is that one of them is a positive reality. This premise can only be substantiated on the basis of what was stated earlier, which implies that one of them consists in an absence. Thus, subsequently claiming that both are positive realities contradicts it.