Thus, these three arguments have shown that the division expresses necessary implication, not receptivity. Even if it did express receptivity, it would not be a negative determination. And even if it were a negative determination, its meaning would be that an existent must, in relation to other existents, be either coincident with them or separate from them. This necessarily follows from an existent’s being either self-subsisting or subsisting in another. Everything self-subsisting is separate from another self-subsisting thing, while everything subsisting in another is coincident with that other and with whatever else subsists in that same subject.

As for the third question—“What do you mean by saying that existents in the observable realm are divided into the coincident and the separate?”—there are two answers.

The first is to say to him: They did not put it this way. Rather, they said that, given two existents, each must be either separate from or coincident with the other, and that a self-subsisting existent, in relation to another existent, is either separate from it or coincident with it. They did not say that existents are divided into two categories, one separate and the other coincident. There is a difference between saying that an existent, in relation to another, necessarily has one of these two relations, and saying that existents are divided into these two categories. Accordingly, the necessary implication of one or the other is a single judgment, not two