If it is said: ‘How did the soul and body come to be united?’

We reply: This is like asking, ‘How did the existence of the First come about?’ The answer is that this question concerns something that began to exist. As for what has always existed, one does not ask how it came about. Likewise, if the body and its soul have each always existed, it is not implausible that it could be a maker.

If it is said: ‘Because a body, insofar as it is a body, cannot create anything else, and a soul attached to a body acts only through that body. Yet the body cannot serve as the soul’s instrument in creating bodies or in bringing souls and things unlike bodies into being.’

We reply: Why should there not be, among souls, a soul endowed with a distinctive property enabling it to bring bodies and nonbodily things into existence? The impossibility of this is neither self-evident nor established by any demonstration. The only basis offered is that this has not been observed in these observable bodies, but the absence of observation does not establish impossibility. For they have