approach, and a group also used it to argue that the world came into being—this being the first approach he mentioned in that connection—he said:

“Our colleagues have advanced several lines of argument. The first is their claim that the world is contingent in itself, and everything contingent in itself is brought into being.”

He argued for its contingency as follows:

“The bodies that make up the world are composite, as previously explained in the discussion of bodies. Everything composite depends upon its parts, and whatever depends upon something else cannot be necessarily existent in itself. Bodies are therefore contingent in themselves. Accidents subsist in bodies and depend upon them, and whatever depends upon something contingent must all the more be contingent itself.”

He then challenged this line of argument, saying:

“Their claim that the world is composite is conceded. But what rules out its parts being necessarily existent? And as for what they have presented by way of