He said:

“All of this assumes that we grant the existence of a necessary existent. We ourselves have said that the method he followed to establish an existent with this attribute is not demonstrative and does not naturally lead to it, except in the manner we have described. This conclusion—namely, the weakness of this method—follows most forcefully for those who posit a simple body not composed of matter and form, which is the position of the Peripatetics. For anyone who posits an eternal composite of parts existing in actuality must acknowledge that it is intrinsically one. Every unity in a composite thing derives from something that is one in itself—that is, simple—and it is through this one that the world becomes one.

“Alexander likewise says that there must be a spiritual power pervading all the parts of the world, just as there is, throughout the parts of a single animal, a power binding its parts together. The difference between them is that the bond in the world is eternal because that which binds it is eternal, whereas the bond between the parts of