a division whose two alternatives are mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive. This also reveals his error in the third question. Since this division is not a division into two things, as in dividing a universal or a whole, but merely establishes that one of the two alternatives necessarily applies and that neither of the two subjects can lack both, his statement, “This indicates that it admits of division into the two,” is invalid. Rather, this indicates that one of them necessarily applies.

Second: Regarding his statement, “Receptivity to division is a negative determination,” we reply: We do not concede this, nor do we concede that receptivity as such is a negative determination. Rather, the contradictory of existence being receptive to something is the absence of its being unreceptive to it. Receptivity negates this absence, and what negates absence is existence. This is the very argument he used to establish that fatherhood is something positive. If it is sound, it likewise establishes that receptivity is something positive; if it fails in the case of receptivity, it also fails in the case of fatherhood.

Third: His statement: “If it were something positively existing, it would be an attribute of the thing judged to be receptive, and the essence is receptive