and the answers to the questions raised against it, as well as elucidating what is clear, only make it more obscure.”

He said:

“If someone says, ‘Granted that the agent is not nonexistent, why must it be existent?’ we reply: ‘There is no intermediate state between existence and nonexistence.’

“If someone says, ‘Essence entails possibility without the condition of either existence or nonexistence, so it occupies an intermediate position between existence and nonexistence,’ we reply: ‘We do not claim that every reality is either existence or nonexistence, such that essence’s being distinct from both would invalidate this division. Rather, we claim that reason judges each of the infinitely many realities to be necessarily characterized by either existence or nonexistence. This being so, essence’s being distinct from existence and nonexistence does not undermine our statement that there is no intermediate state between existence and nonexistence.’”