with their effects: burning is concurrent with combustion, while pain immediately follows (1) a disordered temperament or a disruption of bodily continuity. Indeed, let us cite something they do not dispute (2), so that it may be more directly relevant to the point at issue: namely, that knowledge is the cause of the state of being knowing, and power the cause of the state of being powerful, according to those who hold this view. All of these causes (3) exist concurrently with their effects and do not precede them. (4) We thus know that the temporal concurrence of an effect and that which produces it does not negate the effect’s dependence and need.”

The response is as follows:

If by “quiddity” (5) is meant something that exists extramentally, such as existing triangles, then the necessary attributes of that quiddity (6) do not proceed from it. Rather, whoever produces the entity also produces the necessary attribute that inheres in it; it is impossible for the agent to produce either one without the other.

As for one who says that the entity possessing the attribute is the cause of its necessary concomitant: if by “cause” he means that the former necessarily entails the latter, this affords him no proof. But if he means that it is an agent, an originator, or an efficient cause, the falsity of his claim is known by self-evident reason. The attributes that subsist in an entity and necessarily belong to it are produced only by the one who produces that entity, for it is impossible for him to produce the entity without producing its necessary attribute [belonging to it] (7). If, however, by “quiddity” is meant that which is conceived in the mind, then it is a cognitive form (8), and the same applies to it as to an extramental quiddity,