Whatever they affirm, the same consequence follows. Otherwise, it would follow that the existence of the Necessary Existent is not contingent, eternal, and originated, and that whatever is originated and contingent must have an eternal cause. It is necessarily known that among existing things are those that are originated and contingent, and that whatever is originated and contingent must have an eternal cause that exists necessarily in itself. The existence of both kinds is therefore a necessary, inescapable fact.

The truth of the matter is that the term “absolute” may mean something universal, the conception of whose meaning does not preclude its being shared by multiple things. Nothing existing in concrete reality, whether self-subsisting or an attribute of something else, can exist in this manner—let alone the Lord of the worlds, the One, the Self-Sufficient.

The term “absolute” may also mean that which is divested of positive attributes, or of both positive and negative attributes; and the absolute without the condition of absoluteness. If this is conceived as something determinate and particular rather than universal, its existence in concrete reality is even more impossible than that of absolute universals conditioned by their universality. For those universals have particulars existing in concrete reality, to which the universals correspond. By contrast, something divested of any positive or negative attribute cannot be realized in concrete reality, whether as a universal or as a particular. The same applies to something divested of positive attributes; indeed, this is even more impossible than the former.

And if this shares with all other existing things what is denoted by “existence,” and is distinguished from them only by negative determinations, whereas they are distinguished from it by positive determinations,