He said:

“If it is objected:

‘This would mean that the necessary existent is constituted by contingent existents, which is impossible.’

We reply:

‘If by “necessary” and “contingent” you mean what we have stated, then that is precisely what we seek to establish, and we do not concede that it is impossible.

This is like someone saying: “It is impossible for something beginningless to be constituted by temporally originated things.” Yet time, according to them, is beginningless, while the individual entities are temporally originated and have beginnings, whereas the whole has no beginning. Thus, something without a beginning is constituted by entities with beginnings. Having beginnings applies to the individual entities but not to the whole.

Likewise, each individual cause is said to have a cause, but the whole is not said to have a cause. Not everything that holds true of the individuals must hold true of the whole, for it holds true of each individual that it is one, that it is a portion, and that it is