meanings of this kind.

It does one no good to say, “These are relational matters, not positive realities,” even without holding that relations are among the accidents that have positive existence. How much less so if that position is adopted! For we know by necessity that these matters belong exclusively to what exists, not to what does not exist, and that what does not exist cannot be described by them. Purely negative matters, however, are not exclusive to what exists, nor is it impossible to describe what does not exist by them.

Moreover, what does not exist is described by their contradictories. Thus one says, “It is not an agent, an intellective subject, an object of intellection, or intellect; it is not necessary and exercises no providence.” If these matters were negative, their contradictories would be positive, for existence is the contradictory of nonexistence. If their contradictories were positive, it would be impossible to predicate them of what does not exist, for it is among the most self-evident truths known by necessity that existence cannot be an attribute of nonexistence. If, then, their contradictories are attributes of nonexistence, those contradictories must be negative, and these matters must therefore be positive. They are meanings that necessarily belong to the Necessary Existent, and multiple meanings must be affirmed of every existent. Thus, if these meanings, which are distinguishable in the mind, are indispensable to necessary existence