Being versus Non-being

The terms ‘being’ and ’non-being’ are used in 3 ways:

1. With reference to the categories
2. With reference to the potentiality or actuality of these or their non-potency or nonactuality
3. In the sense of true and false.

1. Categories

This depends, on the side of the objects, on their being combined or separated.

• A person who thinks the separated are separated and the combined are combined has the truth.
• The person who thinks otherwise is wrong.

‘Being’ is in existing as combined and one

‘Non being’ is in existing not combined and more than one.

This is true when some things:

• are always combined and cannot be separated
• are always separated and cannot be combined
• are capable either of combination or of separation

Regarding contingent facts, then, the same opinion or the same statement comes to be false and true, and it is possible for it to be at one time correct and at another erroneous; but regarding things that cannot be otherwise opinions are not at one time true and at another false, but the same opinions are always true or always false.

But with regard to incomposites, what is being or not being, and truth or falsity?

A thing of this sort is not composite, so as to ‘be’ when it is compounded, and not to ‘be’ if it is separated, like ’that the wood is white’ or ’that the diagonal is incommensurable’; nor will truth and falsity be still present in the same way as in the previous cases.

Truth is not the same in the above cases. And so, being is also not the same.

2. Potentiality Versus Actuality

Contact and assertion are truth (assertion is not the same as affirmation). Ignorance is non-contact.

We can be wrong about a thing in an accidental sense.

The same is true regarding non-composite substances (for it is not possible to be in error about them).

They all exist actually, not potentially. Otherwise, they would have existed and stopped existing.

But existence itself does not come to be (nor cease to be).

If it had done so, it would have had to come out of something.

Therefore, it is impossible to be in error with essences and actualities.

Our error is only in know them or not knowing them.

3. Truth or Falsity

There is:

• truth if the subject and the attribute are really combined
• falsity if they are not combined

If the object exists, then it exists in a particular way

If it does not exist in this way, then it does not exist at all.

Truth means knowing these objects. It means:

• falsity and error do not exist
• only ignorance exists

In unchangeable things there can be no error in respect of time.

If a triangle does not change, we shall not suppose that at one time its angles are equal to 2 right angles while at another time they are not (for that would imply change).

It is possible, however, to suppose that one member of such a class has a certain attribute and another has not.

For example, while we may suppose that no even number is prime, we may suppose that some are and some are not.

But regarding a numerically single number not even this form of error is possible; for we cannot in this case suppose that one instance has an attribute and another has not, but whether our judgement be true or false, it is implied that the fact is eternal.