outwardly.

The seventh response concerns his statement: “Those parts must be either alike in essence or different in essence.”

The reply is: It has already become clear that what you have stated does not entail the existence of parts here. At most, it entails distinguishing one thing from another and one side from another. The same considerations apply to the attributes of something of this kind. If it is said that, although it is one, it has parts distinguishable from one another, the same can be said of the attributes subsisting in it, the space it occupies, and that with which it is in contact.

In short, whenever one supposes that something within it is distinguishable from something else, and calls these parts, each part has a property distinguishing it. It may then be said: Whether or not there exist parts and portions distinguishable from one another, if someone says, “Each part must either resemble the other or not resemble it,” the reply is: If by resemblance you mean that one can take the other’s place in what is peculiar to it as an individual, then no two things in the world are alike. But if by resemblance you mean that one can take the other’s place in what belongs to its kind rather than to it as an individual, your opponent will tell you that they are alike. If he says this, you cannot then say, “Thus, what is in contact could be distant, and what is distant could be in contact,” because the individual attributes of that which is in contact include its adjacency