 The first important feature of Burley’s earlier ontology is his belief that apart from substances, quantities, and qualities, the categories do not contain entities in the full sense of the term, but respectus reales, i.e., real aspects of absolute things. In the fourth chapter of his middle commentary on the Categories (ch. de numero et sufficientia praedicamentorum, ed. Conti, pp. 25–28), Burley mentions two previous accounts of the problem of the number and distinction of the ten categories. The first (from Simon of Faversham’s commentary, q. 12) claims that the categories really divide entities according to their modes of being. The second, inspired by Henry of Ghent, admits that being-in-relation-to-something-else (esse ad aliud), i.e., the mode of being of the seven non-absolute categories, does not involve a res distinct from substance, quantity, and quality, but only their real aspects. Although Burley does not explicitly endorse either interpretation, he is not exactly neutral on the matter. In fact, his introductory comments together with the amount of space he devotes to each suggest that he agrees with those authors who think that, properly speaking, only the three absolute categories are fully things (res). Consequently, Burley presents Henry’s interpretation as emerging from the lack of supporting proof for Simon’s thesis (TsP, ch. de numero et sufficientia praedicamentorum, ed. Conti, pp. 26–27). Moreover, he states that the ten categories can be ordered in terms of their degrees of reality and independence, since the non-absolute categories are caused by and grounded in the three absolute ones (TsP, ch. de numero et sufficientia praedicamentorum, ed. Conti, p. 27).