registered by the senses. This division, however, is not a matter of sensory perception but a rational judgment. Reason cannot delimit a category exhaustively before encompassing all its members, nor establish a necessary connection between two things before knowing the basis of that connection. If existence itself does not entail this exhaustive division and necessary connection, the mind cannot judge accordingly until it knows some proof establishing them. A judgment cannot be self-evident while the proof on which it rests requires reasoning and inference.

Anyone who reflects on the workings of his reason knows that it judges this division and necessary connection merely upon knowing that something exists, before knowing that it originated or knowing anything else about it. If existence did not entail this judgment, reason could judge only what it perceived through the senses, in these two cases: “This is spatially separate from that,” and “This is co-located with it.” But to make a universal judgment concerning all existing things—that each must be either co-located with another or spatially separate from it—before knowing that the two are alike in this respect would be a judgment without foundation.

This argument requires establishing that the cause in external reality is also the cause in the mind; otherwise, the point remains open to dispute.

As for his statement in the seventh question: “If existence were one in the observable and the unobservable, it would be so only by verbal equivocation. This is possible only if the Creator is like originated things, or existence is additional