In many ways it can be shown that stability must be kept apart
from essence. In the first place, if stability were identical with
essence, why should it be so, rather than movement, which is life,
the actualization of being, and of essence itself? Since we have
distinguished between movement and essence, and since we have said that
it is both identical therewith, and still at the same time different
from it; and because essence and movement are different from each other
from one viewpoint, but from another, are identical; we must also (in
thought) distinguish stability from essence without separating it
(in existence); and by separating it in thought, we shall be making
a distinct genus of it. Indeed, if stability and essence were to
be confused together in a perfect union, if we were to acknowledge
no difference between them, we would still be obliged to identify
stability with movement by the intermediation of essence; in this
way stability and movement would together form but one and the same
thing.[307]