[The second point]

The second point:

It may be said: Your statement, “We do not concede that every contingent being needs an external cause, because the aggregate composed of the necessary and the contingent is contingent yet does not need an external cause,” is erroneous.

For the term “contingent” (mumkin) is ambiguous. It may mean that which is not impossible, in which case even what is necessary in itself would be “contingent.”

It may mean that which does not exist but can exist, in which case whatever has come to exist is not contingent but necessary through another.

Moreover, that which admits of existence and nonexistence is that which has a beginning, according to most rational thinkers—indeed, all of them. Yet some contradicted themselves by extending this category to encompass both what has a beginning and the beginningless being they claimed was necessary through another.

It may also mean that which has no existence of itself, but admits of nonexistence, both as a whole and in every one of its parts.

Yet you have called the aggregate of existing beings contingent, meaning that the aggregate admits of nonexistence, whereas this is not true of every one of its parts.

Those who said that the aggregate of contingent beings, or the aggregate of contingent causes, is contingent meant that anything which cannot exist of itself, but admits of nonexistence in itself, with every one of its parts likewise admitting of nonexistence, is in need