and his opponent says to him, “I cannot conceive of something existing alongside another thing without either preceding it or having come into being.” This is the analogy he drew and the original case on which he based his comparison: an existing thing lacking both these attributes, although it must possess one of them. For whatever is preceded by another has come into being, whereas whatever precedes another—or precedes everything—is eternal.

y– He said, “The same applies to our question: I cannot conceive of something existing alongside another thing without being either above or below it, or without being either inside it or outside it.” Here too, he has spoken of something existing alongside another thing while lacking both these attributes. Each of these two predicates, into which existing things are divided, together with whatever bears that predicate, stands in relation to the other predicate and whatever bears it. Thus, eternity and the eternal stand in relation to that which has come into being and its coming into being, and vice versa. Likewise, being above and that which is above stand in relation to being below and that which is below.

The eternal precedes that which has come into being, and nothing precedes it. That which has come into being is what the eternal preceded, or what was preceded by its own nonexistence—that is, it existed after not existing. Before it, therefore, there was a postulated time in which its existence could be supposed, although it did not exist then; rather, it exists at another time.

That which is above stands above that which is below, and is the highest, with nothing above it. That which is below is what has the higher above it, and what has nonexistence above it—that is, there would necessarily have to exist something that it was not