If you mean the former, it would follow that an essence devoid of action is neither a first principle nor a first cause. They accept this consequence, for an essence devoid of action has no reality according to them, and they deny that the First is such.

If you mean the latter, it would not follow that the first principle depends on a first principle. For if it is a principle by virtue of its attributes and acts, in which it needs nothing else, then it is the first principle without needing anything else.

[The Fourth Argument]

It may be said:

If the world is necessarily existent in itself while needing an object of love, then what is necessarily existent would be an effect in certain respects. It would therefore be possible for the first object of love, despite being necessarily existent in itself, to have something external through which it becomes an agent. For on this account, the world is necessarily existent, yet has something external through which it becomes an agent.

If, however, the world is possibly existent in itself, it can exist only through an originating agent who brings it into being. Origination is an act and work of the originator, whereas you have made the First nothing more than an object of love.

Furthermore, if the First is an agent that originates the world, with all the diverse things within it that come into being, it cannot have been their actual maker from eternity. That would entail the existence of every temporally originated thing from eternity, which flies in the face of sensory evidence.

It must therefore have been a maker potentially, then become a maker actually, without any cause external to it. For on this supposition, everything external to it is possibly existent and an effect it produces. If its production of that effect depended on an influence exerted upon the First, circularity would follow.