II. Rejection of the Opinion

61. Against this:

First, because what is not distinct or determinate of itself cannot be the first distinguisher or determiner of something else; but the being of existence, in the way it is distinguished from the being of essence, is not distinct or determinate of itself (for the being of existence does not have its own differences besides the differences of the being of essence, because then one would have to posit a proper ordering for existences other than the ordering for essences), but the being of existence is determined precisely by the other’s determination;     therefore it does not determine anything else.

62. On this basis one can argue in another way: because that which presupposes the determinateness and distinctness of something else is not the reason for distinguishing and determining itself; but existence, as it is determinate and distinct, presupposes the order and distinctness of essences; therefore etc     .

63. And if it be said that existence presupposes every distinctness other than the one that is for individuals, but that it causes the distinctness that is as it were for an individual - on the contrary: in the ordering in a category there exist, when whatever is no part of the ordering is removed, all the things that per se pertain to the ordering, because, according to the Philosopher in Posterior Analytics 1.20.82a21-24, ‘in any category a stand is made upwards and downwards’. Therefore just as the highest in a genus is found precisely by considering it under the idea of essence, so the intermediate genera and species and differences are found in this way; the lowest, namely the singular, is also found there, with actual existence altogether removed - as is plainly evident, because ‘this man’ does not formally include actual existence any more than ‘man’ does.

64. Further, there is the same question about existence - by what and how it is contracted so as to be a ‘this’ - as there is about nature, for if the specific nature is the same in several individuals, it has an existence in them of the same idea: following the way the proof that specific nature is not a ‘this’ goes in the solution to the first question [nn.29-30], it can in the same way be asked what existence is a ‘this’ by (because it is not of itself a ‘this’), and so to give existence as what nature is a ‘this’ by is not sufficient.