by which it is set apart; for sheer privations cannot themselves confer distinctiveness. Hence composition from the element of commonality and the element of particularity is established—whether you regard the term “existence” as an analogically equivocal word (mushakkik), or as univocal in the broad sense, or univocal in the strict sense.

Let us add: it is well known that when we say “existence is divided into necessary and contingent,” the locus of that division is the universal, abstract meaning. A universal, however, is universal only in the mind, not in external reality. Consequently, none of the created things is actually composed of “that by which it is shared” and “that by which it is distinguished.” Every existent is individuated by the properties that inhere in it just as it is individuated by its very self; no other being shares those properties with it. If, then, the creatures are not composite in this regard, the Creator is even more entitled to be free of such composition.

Your error, however, arose from your Greek logic. Observing that the human being resembles other animals in “animality” and differs from them by speech, and that the horse resembles other animals in animality and differs by its neighing, you concluded that the human being is compounded of “animality” and “rationality,” and that the horse is compounded of “animal” and “neigher,” or of “animality” and “neigh-hood,” and so on with all species. You then imagined that such a composition actually prevails outside the mind. This is a grave mistake that has befallen you in your intellectual balance—the very rule with which you weigh intelligible notions, the instrument you deemed a formal tool whose correct use would preserve the mind from error.