You ask me to state and explain somewhat more clearly that obscure question in my Hebdomads[32] concerning the manner in which substances can be good in virtue of existence without being absolute goods.[33] You urge that this demonstration is necessary because the method of this kind of treatise is not clear to all. I can bear witness with what eagerness you have already attacked the subject. But I confess I like to expound my Hebdomads to myself, and would rather bury my speculations in my own memory than share them with any of those pert and frivolous persons who will not tolerate an argument unless it is made amusing. Wherefore do not you take objection to the obscurity that waits on brevity; for obscurity is the sure treasure-house of secret doctrine and has the further advantage that it speaks a language understood only of those who deserve to understand. I have therefore followed the example of the mathematical[34] and cognate sciences and laid down bounds and rules according to which I shall develop all that follows.
I. A common conception is a statement generally accepted as soon as it is made. Of these there are two kinds. One is universally intelligible; as, for instance, "if equals be taken from equals the remainders are equal." Nobody who grasps that proposition will deny it. The other kind is intelligible only to the learned, but it is derived from the same class of common conceptions; as "Incorporeals cannot occupy space," and the like. This is obvious to the learned but not to the common herd.
II. Being and a concrete thing[35] are different. Simple Being awaits manifestation, but a thing is and exists[36] as soon as it has received the form which gives it Being.
III. A concrete thing can participate in something else; but absolute Being can in no wise participate in anything. For participation is effected when a thing already is; but it is something after it has acquired Being.
IV. That which exists can possess something besides itself. But absolute
Being has no admixture of aught besides Itself.
V. Merely to be something and to be something absolutely are different;
the former implies accidents, the latter connotes a substance.
VI. Everything that is participates in absolute Being[37] through the fact that it exists. In order to be something it participates in something else. Hence that which exists participates in absolute Being through the fact that it exists, but it exists in order to participate in something else.
VII. Every simple thing possesses as a unity its absolute and its
particular Being.
VIII. In every composite thing absolute and individual Being are not one
and the same.
IX. Diversity repels; likeness attracts. That which seeks something
outside itself is demonstrably of the same nature as that which it
seeks.