In the second place, assuming that the mind can apprehend, in the individuals of its experience, a unity resulting from the union or composition of separable factors or principles, whether essential or accidental [27 (_b_)]; and assuming that it can know these factors to be really separable (though actually one and undivided), that is, separable in the sense that each of any two such factors, or at least one of them, could actually exist without the other,—it regards the distinction between such factors as real. They are really distinct because though _actually_ one and undivided they are _potentially_ manifold. If each has a positive entity of its own, so that absolutely speaking each could exist without the other, the distinction is still regarded as an absolute or major real distinction. For example, the human soul can exist without the body; the body can exist without the soul, being actualized by the new formative principle or principles which replace the soul at death; therefore there is an absolute real distinction between the soul and the body of the living human individual: although both factors form _one actual being_, still, independently of the consideration of the mind _the one factor is not the other_: each is really, though only potentially, other than the factor with which it is united: the relation of “one” to “other” though not _actually_ verified of either factor (since there is only _one actual_ being: the existing individual man), is potentially and really verified, _i.e._ _verifiable_ of each. Again, the individual corporeal substance can, absolutely speaking, exist without its connatural accident of external or local extension; this latter can, absolutely speaking, exist without its connatural substance;(158) therefore these are absolutely and really distinct.