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30 CONCERNING BEING AND ESSENCE cerned, seeing that the soul does not acquire individuated existence except in a body of which it is the act, still it does not follow that, the body being removed, the individuation would perish; because, since it (the soul) has absolute existence from the time individuated existence is acquired, in that it is made the form of this body, that existence always remains in- dividuated. And therefore Avicenna says 34 that the individua- tion of souls and their multitude depends upon the body in respect to their beginning but not in respect to their end. And because in those substances quiddity is not the same as existence therefore they are capable of being ordered in a predicament (category) and for this reason genus, species, and difference are found in them, although their proper differences are hid- den from us. For in sensible things likewise the essential dif- ferences themselves are unknown; hence they are signified by means of the accidental differences which arise from their essential differences, as a cause is signified by means of its effect, as for instance biped is posited as the difference of man. But the proper accidents of immaterial substances are not known to us, and accordingly their differences cannot be signi- fied by us either by virtue of themselves or by virtue of their accidental differences. Still one ought to know that genus and difference are not taken in the same mode in those substances and in sensible sub- stances, because in sensible substances genus is taken from that which is material in the thing, but difference is taken from that which is formal in it. Whence Avicenna says in the be- ginning of his book De Anima 85 that form in things composed of matter and form "is the simple difference of that which is constituted from it," not, however, so that the form itself is the difference, but because it is the principle of the difference, 84 Avicenna, DC An., V, c. 3, f. 14 b. 80 Avicenna, De An., I, i, f i b E xa.