combining two contradictories. An endless regress of these effects without reaching something that exists through itself is even more impossible. Yet anyone who imagines them to be a series of existing things becomes confused about the matter. Positing them as a series of existing things is itself impossible; indeed, it combines two contradictories. For the supposition is that none of them exists through itself and that none exists except through something existing that brings it into existence. If none of them exists through itself, and nothing existing brings them into existence, then none of them can be anything but nonexistent. Thus, positing their existence combines two contradictories.

To explain this: each of them depends on something to bring it into existence and therefore does not exist through itself. Its cause does not exist through itself either. Thus, none of them exists through itself, and there is no cause here that exists through itself. If each is assumed to exist through another, that other is in precisely the same position: it has no existence of its own. There is therefore nothing existing to bring them into existence except what is posited among them. Yet if any one of them has no existence of its own, then all the more certainly it cannot bring another into existence. It therefore has neither existence of its own nor the ability to bring anything into existence. Another of its kind likewise has neither existence of its own nor the ability to bring anything into existence. How, then, could any of them exist without either existence of its own or something bringing it into existence? For bringing something into existence presupposes existence.

[Al-Abharī’s objection is invalid on several grounds]

I say: This objection is utterly invalid. Its invalidity can be demonstrated on several grounds: