we reply: “Either the totality is determined by all its constituent members together or by one of them. If it comes into existence through them, the impossibility we have charged them with follows. If it is determined by all the members together, these are the very totality posited, which would mean that something determines itself—and that is impossible.”

[Ibn Taymiyyah’s commentary]

I say: One might respond that the argument mentioned does not require establishing that the totality is distinct from the individual members, even though that is true. For someone who says, “We do not concede that anything called a totality exists in an infinite series,” may be told: Either there is a totality here distinct from the individual members, or there is not. If there is, the objection is invalid; if there is not, this makes the argument still more compelling. Each individual member is contingent, and there is no totality here that could be necessary. Thus, none of these contingent things can exist by itself or through another contingent thing, just as the contingent totality cannot exist through any individual contingent thing.

He himself raised this objection, and it would have sufficed him without establishing points whose omission would have made the argument more compelling and stronger.

The same applies to the second objection, namely his statement: “We grant that the concept of a totality applies to an infinite series and that it is contingent, but we do not concede that it is something over and above the individual members succeeding one another. It therefore has no cause other than the cause of those individual members.” For this objection is