As for the majority, they say:

In external reality, created realities are nothing other than the existent entity itself, which is the reality existing externally. The distinction between the two arises only when one is treated as mental and the other as external. Thus, when “quiddity” or “reality” is used as a name for what is in the mind, that is other than what exists externally.

When one speaks of “mental existence,” however, it is the mental quiddity; and when one speaks of “external quiddity,” it is external existence. If this holds true of a created being, it holds all the more true of the Creator.

Once it is fully understood, the falsity of Avicenna’s position is known by rational necessity. If two existent beings share in the meaning denoted by “existence,” one cannot be distinguished from the other by mere negation. Indeed, the distinction in actual reality between two things sharing something cannot arise from sheer nonexistence alone, for sheer nonexistence is nothing, and what is nothing cannot produce distinction in actual reality. The differentiating feature between two existent things that is peculiar to one of them must therefore be something positive or something entailing a positive feature.

This is an established principle among them in logic. How, then, could the Lord’s existence resemble the existence of contingent beings in the meaning denoted by “existence” (1), while being distinguished from created beings only by sheer nonexistence containing nothing positive?

Rather, on this supposition, any existent being one might posit would be more perfect than this existent being. In his view, that existent is distinguished—in addition to its existence—by something positive, whereas necessary existence is distinguished only by something privative, even though the two are alike in the meaning denoted by “existence.”

Thus, this position entails that necessary existence resembles the existence of every contingent being with respect to