is not permissible, whether with regard to attributes that are affirmed or those that are denied.

The twentieth argument: It may be said to you: We do not concede that every body composed of parts differing in essence must ultimately be resolved into parts free of composition, each capable of touching whatever the other touches. If you rely here on analogizing from the observed to the unobserved, the differences will be pointed out to you: the necessary existence, beginninglessness, self-sufficiency, and other attributes of one, but not the other—as is done with other invalid analogies. You have no evidence for this universal claim except what itself depends on analogy.

This becomes clear through the twenty-first argument: What do you mean by resolving its composition into parts? Do you mean that it must separate, or be capable of separating, into those parts? This is not conceded; it is precisely the point at issue. How, then, can you use a proposition as its own proof, thereby begging the question? Or do you mean by resolution that it contains parts, as the whole contains this part and others? There are then only two possibilities: either by a part free of composition he means something simple with respect to that particular composition, even if it consists of similar parts, or he means by it