He may therefore be told: This contradicts your earlier statement that the efficient cause of the aggregate of existing things is one of them, which you claimed countered their assertion that the efficient cause of the aggregate of contingent beings cannot be one of them. Since the two statements contradict each other, you must say either that the efficient cause of the aggregate is a part of it or that its efficient cause is the aggregate itself. If you say that it is a part of it, this objection fails, and the proof establishing the impossibility of contingent effects without a necessary cause remains sound. This achieves the intended aim of establishing the Necessary Existent. If you say that the efficient cause is the aggregate itself, your objection to that proof fails, and the proof stands unopposed, thereby achieving the intended aim.

[The fourth perspective]

It may be said: Your statement, “The totality of the things, or the aggregate of the things, upon which the necessary and the contingent depend is not internal to the aggregate,” implies that the aggregate of existing things depends upon something. Yet you have offered no proof of this. Why, then, do you say that the aggregate of existing things depends upon something? They claimed only that the aggregate of contingent beings depends upon something. This is known through several proofs—indeed, it is self-evident—whereas what you have stated is not known to be true.

[The fifth perspective]

It may be said: The aggregate of existing things, which includes the Necessary Existent