  The resolution of all our items of simple apprehension into the concept of being is metaphysically and epistemologically crucial: metaphysically, it opens up a route of argumentation that leads to the existence of God; epistemologically, such a resolution means that behind all, even the most determinate and specific, conceptions of things lies a transcendental awareness of being that informs all of our knowledge. If we take the concept of substance as being in itself, we cannot come to know a particular substance’s definition without the concept of being presupposed in the background, and in addition we are concomitantly aware of the transcendental properties of being (unity, truth, and goodness) in any such notion. Such co-extensive transcendental properties, however, are only one of the two types of properties that belong to being; the other transcendental properties (later called disjunctive properties) prove extremely useful for increasing our metaphysical knowledge. Being may be conceived of as either actual or potential, absolute or dependent, prior or posterior, immutable or mutable. Yet to conceive of being as potential, dependent, posterior, or mutable requires that we already be acquainted with being as actual, independent, prior and immutable. In other words, the more perfect of the two disjuncts in any of the disjunctive transcendentals must be an item we acknowledge in our awareness of being: