And if you mean the efficient cause, why do you say that some of the parts must suffice for the aggregate?”

[The reply to this objection from several perspectives]

[The first reply]

We say:

It is self-evident that the aggregate of contingent effects is itself a contingent effect. For the aggregate depends on contingent effects, and whatever depends on an effect must all the more be an effect itself. Thus, his challenge to that argument does no harm, since it challenges self-evident truths and is therefore of the same kind as sophistical doubts.

[The second reply]

The aggregate of contingent effects is either necessary in itself or contingent. If it is contingent, what necessitates it must be either itself, a part of it, or something outside it.

As for the aggregate of contingent effects being necessary in itself, this is self-evidently false. For the aggregate is either each individual member, the configuration resulting from their combination, or both together; and each of these is contingent.

Thus, the individual members are not contingent, and each of them is an effect, even if an infinite number of them is assumed,