The first is that what is meant is that an existent necessarily possesses one of the two attributes. That is, of any two existents, one must be either co-located with the other or separate from it. The necessary attachment of one of these two attributes to existence, its inherence in it, and its inseparability from it are what is meant by saying, “It is either co-located or separate.” This is the proposition they call jointly exhaustive, while also being mutually exclusive: an existent cannot lack both of these two attributes. Being devoid of attributes is a negative determination, so its contradictory must be positive. Thus, an existent’s possessing one of these two attributes is something positive.

This division does not mean that the two existents are divided into one that is co-located and another that is separate. For two accidents inhering in a single substrate are each co-located with the other, not apart from it; and two substances are each apart from the other, not co-located with it. This is therefore not a division of a universal into its particulars; rather, it is