it does not entail the existence of a counterpart. At most, it does not establish that a counterpart exists. Yet he may say: “If its individuation cannot belong to anything else, then the existence of that individuation entails neither the existence nor the nonexistence of a counterpart.”

The response is: This argument establishes nothing beyond what is already known without it: that the intellect can conceive of a thing existing without a counterpart, and that this is possible. This argument offers no specific proof that a counterpart is not required; at most, it amounts to the existence of the thing itself without a counterpart.

If someone were to say, “A thing’s existence might depend upon its counterpart, because its existence is conditional upon the existence of that counterpart, or of something else—as with correlative things—and you have furnished no proof ruling out such necessary concomitance,” his objection would be correct, for the argument contains nothing that rules out such concomitance. But the response would be: We can conceive of its possibly existing without such concomitance, so there is no need for his argument.

This becomes clear when we consider what it would mean for the impossibility of a thing’s individual identity occurring in something else to preclude the necessity of a likeness or counterpart. That would entail that affirming a thing entails its nonexistence. For affirming similarity, correspondence, and equality entails affirming distinct individual identities, and that the individual identity of one is not that of the other. If this distinction in individual identity precluded the necessity of a likeness, then something entailed by a thing—indeed, part of its very meaning—would preclude its being necessary; for what is entailed