This holds for any two things that share one feature and differ in another, and they have no way around it. For being a necessary concomitant of other things is broader than being a cause, an effect, or neither a cause nor an effect. Not every necessary concomitant is an effect. Thus, if each of the two necessities is a necessary concomitant of its particular bearer, it does not follow that the necessary being is an effect or that its bearer is a cause.

This exposes the invalidity of his second premise, in which he says: “The essence of a thing may be the cause of one of its attributes, and one attribute may be the cause of another. But its existence cannot be caused by its essence, which is distinct from existence, or by another attribute, because a cause precedes its effect in existence, and nothing can precede existence by existing before existence.”

He may be answered as follows: By the word “cause,” you may mean either a necessitating cause or a condition. If you mean the former, it is not treated as an effect of something else, lest this entail something other than necessary existence preceding it.

If, however, by “cause” you mean a condition, a condition need not precede what is conditional upon it; it may coexist with it. Thus, mutually dependent things, such as mutadāyiqāt, cannot exist except together: the existence of each is conditional upon the other, without either preceding the other.

Likewise, you maintain that, in the case of matter and form, each is a condition for