can occur only between two accidents, and not between a body and an accident—is it what prevents them from coexisting in a single subject, or what prevents them from coexisting at all, even in two different subjects?”

If they mean the former, that is contrariety, prevention, and mutual exclusion in the specific technical sense. No one has claimed that the word “veil” was coined in Arabic to denote this particular meaning. It is well known that a body admits accidents: its being a body in general does not prevent accidents from inhering in it, although its particular nature may preclude certain accidents from inhering in it.

If, instead, they say, “Rather, prevention and contrariety in any sense, even between things in two different subjects, cannot occur between a body and an accident,” the reply is: This is neither conceded nor correct. That many bodies prevent many accidents, such as smell, taste, and touch, is perceptible to the senses. The most that can be said is that a body, considered simply as a body, is not incompatible with an accident, considered simply as an accident, since the latter can inhere in the former. But there is a difference between universal negation and the negation of universality: denying possibility and admissibility in a particular respect is not the same as denying them without qualification.