two would all the more entail the existence of the Maker. Even if the existence of infinitely many contingent causes were possible, their impossibility would be greater still. What, then, of a finite number—as when some posit that the first intellect originated the second, and the second originated the third and its sphere, and so on down to the tenth, which originated what lies beneath the sphere? If infinitely many are posited, the entailment is greater still.

It is thus clear that the more numerous contingent beings become, and the further their succession extends, the more strongly they indicate the existence of the Necessary Existent and entail His existence. A person may posit an endless succession of causes that are themselves effects, and imagine that a cause alone produces its effect, requires it, or necessitates it. But this is impossible: if a cause is itself an effect, it necessarily cannot subsist by itself but depends on something else. The effect that depends on it therefore depends on the cause of its cause, upon which that cause itself depends. Thus, just as its effect depends on it, it also depends on everything upon which it depends. If infinitely many such causes are posited, the effect is thereby posited as dependent on infinitely many things, none of which exists through itself or is independent of anything else.