in itself. This is analogous to color: when considered in abstraction, it neither entails blackness nor precludes it. Likewise, animal, when considered in abstraction, neither entails rationality nor precludes it. The same applies to all other general concepts that function like genera: when considered without regard to some of their species, they would not (1) entail them or preclude them.
Fourth: The statement,
(“Origination, insofar as it is origination, precludes any need for a cause”)
(2) is known to be false by self-evident reason. Indeed, its falsity is more evident than the falsity of the statement that possibility, insofar as it is possibility, precludes any need for a cause. For people know more evidently and clearly that whatever came into being after not having existed must have an originator than they know that whatever admits (3) existence and nonexistence must have a preponderating cause. Thus, if the argument denying the latter is sophistical, the former has an even greater claim to be sophistical.
Fifth: This argument rests upon the claim that, in external reality, there is a quiddity distinct from the existence realized in external reality, and that (4) existence and nonexistence successively befall it. This is not conceded and is false.
Sixth: Even if that were conceded, a quiddity considered in itself warrants neither existence nor nonexistence, nor does it depend upon an agent. For those who hold this view say that quiddities are not produced and that (5) what is produced is their being qualified (6) by existence. They depend upon an agent only when they are