so it would necessarily be its own determining cause, since it is one of those members. It would therefore be both its own cause and its own effect. If, however, it is outside the totality, it cannot be contingent, for then it would belong to the totality; it must therefore be necessary.”

He then presented the questioner’s objection to this:

“We do not concede that anything called a totality exists in an infinite series, such that your argument would hold. Nor does its validity in the finite case, which implies a limit, entail its validity in the infinite case. Granted that the concept of a totality applies to what is infinite and that this totality is contingent, we nevertheless do not concede that it is anything over and above the individual members succeeding one another without end. In that case, it need not have a cause other than the cause of its individual members.

“Granted that it is something over and above its individual members, what prevents it from being determined by the members within it? This need not mean that it is determined by a single member, which would entail what you have stated. Rather, its determination by the members within it consists in each member being determined by another, and so on without end. On this account, it need not depend upon a determining cause outside the totality, nor need the determining cause of the totality be the determining cause of itself or of its own cause.”