in these two respects is greater than any known separateness of one created being from another, since nothing is like Him in any of His attributes. Affirming some forms of separateness while denying others, however, entails that He resembles created beings, and that His resemblance to some created beings is greater than their resemblance to one another. This is impossible.

This is clarified by the thirty-seventh argument: separateness entails difference in reality and is the opposite of likeness. Wherever separateness exists, it necessarily entails such difference. Separateness in direction and spatial location requires that one entity be individually distinct from the other. This rules out their being one and the same and establishes a difference between them. Likewise, difference in attribute and magnitude rules out likeness and establishes separateness and difference.

Although he has said that “separateness” is used to mean separateness in direction and difference in reality, and has stated that the first meaning is more apparent, separateness necessarily entails difference in reality wherever it exists. For it is inconceivable that two like things could resemble one another to the point that their distinction as individual entities disappears. Rather, one must be an entity distinct from the other, and each must have conditions peculiar to it, as with two like accidents. Indeed, even with two instances of blackness, if one inheres in a substrate after the other, the time of the one differs from the time of the other. For this reason, it is said that separateness may be