greater, and knowledge that the aggregate is impossible or contingent is all the more warranted. If we were to suppose entities that are necessarily existent in themselves and independent of anything else, such that none is a condition for another, then the aggregate would be necessarily existent. Its necessary existence would not obtain without the necessary existence of its individual members. It would be impossible to say that the aggregate is impossible or contingent while each individual member is necessarily existent in itself, with a necessity that depends on nothing else.

It thus becomes clear that if something is contingent in itself, its contingency does not depend on anything else. Its contingency means that it has no intrinsic claim to existence and cannot exist by itself. Considered in itself, it is wholly dependent—that is, it has an intrinsic need that makes self-sufficiency impossible.

Whether we say that its nonexistence requires no determining factor, or that its nonexistence is due to the absence of a determining factor, and suppose that factor to be absent, in either case only nonexistence is warranted for it; existence is not warranted for it at all.

Multiplying such things, or supposing an infinite number of this kind, does not entail that they come to exist, that they are independent of anything else for their existence, or that some of them exist through others. For multiplying these things, which have a claim only to nonexistence, multiplies both their claim to nonexistence and their need for an agent that exists in itself to bring them into existence.

If, then, we suppose an infinite number of things, none of which has any claim to existence, saying that some bring others into existence is the height of ignorance.

For how can something that has no intrinsic claim to exist have a claim to exist