of the attributes, and their assertion that the attributes are contingent while the Essence is their cause—so that the very thing would be its own agent or its own Necessary Being, a view that inevitably multiplies the number of beings that are necessary in themselves. The falsity of this claim is evident from many angles. What concerns us here, however, is that the attributes inherent in the One described are not brought into being by the Essence as an efficient cause; nor is any essential attribute of the described subject produced(1) by it, or produced by some other efficient cause. If one should say instead that an attribute is “produced” by a receptive cause—in the sense that it must inhere in a locus, and that locus is the Essence—this is acceptable. Hence, when it is affirmed that the attributes are necessary together with the Essence, our opponents have no proof for denying them, for we have already shown that there is no conclusive argument against numerical plurality within what is necessary in existence.

The Essence cannot be without attributes, and the attributes cannot subsist except in the Essence; the two are inseparable. There is therefore no case in which one of them depends on the other while the latter is independent of it, such that someone could claim that the other’s necessity conflicts with that dependence. Even so, we are not fully satisfied with this reply, for it might be objected that describing the attributes—apart from the Essence—as necessary in themselves is impossible for another reason: it would posit two necessary beings, each dependent on the other. If one were to say, “The Essence is necessary in itself and the attributes are necessary in themselves, and each depends on the other,” then this mutual dependence would prevent either from being necessary solely by virtue of itself; it would be necessary both through itself and through the other.

The correct conclusion, therefore, is that what is necessary in itself is the Essence together with its attributes; neither of the two, taken in abstraction, may be called necessary in itself. Although the topic of Essence and attributes requires a fuller treatment than can be given here, we have shown elsewhere that conceiving of an Essence stripped of all attributes is as impossible as conceiving of a purely indeterminate existence. In external reality there is no Essence separated from its attributes, such that one could say, “The attributes are something added.” That distinction exists only in the mind, which then asks whether what it has imagined could exist outside the mind or not. We have also pointed out that among the scholars who