The Origins of Essence

Identity and difference are genuine genera indeed because they also communicate their characteristics to inferior beings, each of which manifests some such element. Neither does essence participate in these four genera as if they were superior genera under which essence itself would be subsumed. For stability, movement, identity and difference do not protrude beyond the sphere of essence and are not interior there too. These five genera that we thus recognize are primary because nothing can be predicated of them in the category of existence, being.