A. First Opinion and its Rejection

16. It is said here [Godfrey of Fontaines, Giles of Rome] that since of one composite thing there is only one being, that being is consequently and per accidens the being of any accident of the whole, and so, if an accident be separated from a subject, God gives it a new being, because it cannot now have the being of the whole which it was an accident of before.

17. Against this:

Just as each thing that is outside its cause and outside the intellect has its own entity, so also does it have its own being; if therefore an accident have outside its subject and the intellect its own essential entity, it also has its own being, and so does not exist formally through the being of the subject. The first proposition is taken here as plain; the other is made clear in the case of ‘being’ and ‘essence’ [nn.28-30].

18. Again, that a form exists in matter necessarily argues that it is a composite, such that the first cannot be posited without the second; but a form is in matter by some natural change (as by alteration or increase);     therefore by that change, and by the same agent, a composite of subject and accident has the formal being of the accident. But it does not formally have the being of the subject, because that being existed before the change; therefore etc     .

19. Again, if an accident, when separated, has a new being, one must posit there a change from lack of the being to this being; but this is impossible. The proof is that it is impossible to set down what this change is; for it is not generation because an accident is not a subject of generation; nor is it increase or alteration, for quantity is not acquired by that change nor is quality, because then quality would be the subject of either increase or alteration, and quantity or quality would be whose being is acquired. And so could one go on arguing about it ad infinitum.The being of a separate quantity or quality would not be acquired by change of increase or alteration because quantity or quality would already be presupposed as the subject of the change and so would not acquire being through it; and as for the being that is supposedly acquired, it would be the being of quantity or quality and so would again not be acquired through the change but presupposed to it. And if one asks how such presupposed being is acquired, the same questions would arise again, and so on ad infinitum. ³⁷

20. Again, that new being, because it is not formally divine being, is either the being properly of substance or of accident or it is neither. If it is in the genus of substance it will be independent and so will not be formally the being of any accident, because no accident can formally be independent or exist per se; if it is in the genus of accident (by reduction in some way or other), it will be as dependent as the form it is the being of, and consequently it will not by that being be formally that whose entity is independent.