kind or several different kinds, comes into being successively. If the First were a complete, eternal cause, it would necessarily entail its effect, and no part of its effect could come after it. Rather, its entire effect would be eternal and everlasting, enduring as long as it does—if an effect can coexist in time with its cause—with nothing coming into being successively. For whatever comes into being at a later time cannot have a complete, eternal cause, since a complete cause necessarily entails its effect, with no interval between them. How, then, could this be so when the parts of motion that arise successively are all separated from eternity past? Such motion therefore cannot be the effect of a complete, eternal cause.

Third: That a particular effect should coexist in time with its agent is inconceivable in external reality. The mind merely supposes it, just as it supposes impossibilities.

Whether or not the agent is called a cause, one cannot conceive of a cause from which an effect proceeds as something it produces, while both coexist in time. Something may, however, necessarily entail something else and coexist with it in time, as an essence necessarily entails its inseparable attributes, or as the motion of one of two connected bodies entails the motion of the other—for example, the motion of a ring and a hand. But that which entails a necessary concomitant is not the agent producing it, for a particular effect inseparable from its agent is altogether inconceivable.

But the term “cause” is ambiguous and liable to confusion, since it has several meanings. It may refer to something that necessarily entails and necessitates another, or it may refer to an agent.

Something that necessarily entails and necessitates another without being an agent can conceivably coexist in time with its necessary concomitant—that which it necessitates but does not produce. But that which it necessitates, which is