15. Aristotle, then, divides being[4] into three. For one part of it is genus, another, as he says, species,[5] and another something undivided.[6] But the atom is so called, not because [Sidenote: p. 337.] of the smallness of its body, but because by its nature it can in no way be cut. But the genus is, as it were, a heap composed of many different seeds. From which heap-resembling genus, all the species of existent things are severed;[7] and it is (one) genus which is sufficient for all things which have come into being. In order that this may be clear, I will point out an example whereby the whole theory of the Peripatetic can be retraced. 16. Let us say that there exists simply “animal,”[8] not any particular animal. This “animal” is neither ox, nor horse, nor man, nor god, nor anything else that can anyhow be apparent, but simply “animal.” From this “animal” the species of all animals have their substance.[9] And the undifferentiated[10] “animal” is the substance of the animals who have been produced in species[11] but is yet none of them. For an animal is man, who takes his beginning [Sidenote: p. 338.] from that “animal,” and an animal is horse who does likewise. The horse and ox and dog and each of the other animals takes its beginning from the simple “animal” which is none of them. 17. But if that “animal” is not one of these, (then) the substance of the things which have been produced has, according to Aristotle, come into being from the things which are not: for the “animal” whence these have severally received it is not one (of them). But, while being none (of them), it has become the one beginning of things which are. But who it is who has sent down this beginning[12] of the things which have been produced later, we shall see when we come to its proper place. 18. Since the threefold essence is, as he says, genus, species and atom, and we have granted[13] “animal” to be genus, and man to be species already differentiated from the multitude of animals, but at the same time commingled with them and not yet transformed into a species of substantial being,[14]--I, when I give form to the man taken apart from the genus, call him by the name of Socrates [Sidenote: p. 339.] or of Diogenes or any one of the many names (there are), and when I (thus) restrict with a name the man who from genus has become species, I call such being an individual.[15] For the genus is divided into species and the species into an atom; but the atom when restricted by a name cannot by its nature be divided into anything else, as we have divided each of the things aforesaid.