that all acts, whether observed or unobserved, must have an agent who performed them and a disposer who ordered them? What is the nature of the dependence of a human being and other made things upon an agent and a disposer who made them and intended them, when they did not make themselves?’

The answer is:

The author of the book has already presented evidence for this, and we have already explained it when we said that an act’s dependence upon its agent is like the agent’s dependence, in his capacity as an agent, upon his act.

We then offer the following proof:

No one may answer this question unless he concedes to us that these things—compositions, configurations, and arrangements—are realities brought into being. If he does not acknowledge that they are acts, he is to be engaged in discussion of the underlying issue, and the necessity of their having come into being is to be established with him. If the matter is as we have described, no one may ask this question while disputing that the things we have mentioned are acts.

For when he says, ‘What is the evidence that these acts depend upon an agent?’ he has already affirmed that they are acts. If he then denies that they are acts, he has invalidated at the end of his statement what he affirmed at its beginning.

He may, however, legitimately ask, ‘What is the evidence that composition depends upon someone who composes it?’ without conceding that it is an act, because of a doubt that arises in his mind.