nor can it fail to be an essence except through a cause. This leads to an infinite regress, because what is said of something described as an essence applies equally to something described as existent.

[The ninth argument]

If that reality and essence depend on a cause for being a reality and an essence, there is no cause other than the Necessary Existent. Yet the Necessary Existent cannot make it a reality while it is nonexistent; it can therefore be made an essence and a reality only while it exists. Accordingly, if its existence is necessary through Him, its reality is also necessary through Him. It therefore cannot admit nonexistence, just as existence itself cannot admit nonexistence, since that would entail the coexistence of contradictories.

[The tenth argument]

If it is supposed that the Necessary Existent has not made it a reality—and it can have no reality except through a cause—then there would be no reality there capable of admitting existence and nonexistence.

[The eleventh argument]

His statement: “Every existent thing, when considered in itself without regard to anything else,” and so forth.

We reply: When we consider the heavens or any other existent thing without regard to anything else, we apprehend only that particular existing entity. If we suppose that its existence is not necessary by virtue of itself, then it exists only through something that brings it into existence. Thus, we understand that a thing exists either through itself or through another. If existence is divided into that which exists through itself and that which exists through another, and the latter is called “possible,” this is a valid division. It is like dividing it into what is produced and what is not produced, or what is created and what is not