under any circumstances. It therefore has a broader scope than what can be seen, whereas a cause cannot have a broader scope than its effect. Moreover, the originated thing that can truly be described as admitting of existence and nonexistence is only the mentally conceived essence that has no existence outside the mind: it admits of being existent or nonexistent. Existence itself, however, does not admit of this.

Second, an essence’s capacity to be existent or nonexistent is not like its capacity to be co-located with something else or spatially separate from it. The former capacity does not subsist in anything existent; rather, it is a mental judgment. The latter, however, is an attribute of something existent, for co-location and spatial separation are attributes of something existent, whereas existence and nonexistence are not both attributes of existent things.

Third, the thing that admits of existence and nonexistence is one and the same thing, admitting of existence at one time and nonexistence at another. It is not that the originated divides into the existent and the nonexistent. Co-location and spatial separation, however, are not two attributes that successively apply to a single essence. Rather, existent essence, considered without qualification, divides into what is co-located and described as spatially separate, and what is spatially separate and not described as co-located. The two cases are therefore not analogous.

Fourth, we have explained that the single judgment is that existence necessarily entails one of the two. This is a single positive judgment. It cannot be said that one of the two alternatives