through will, it must have a deficiency that needs to be remedied from outside? This would follow only if what moved it were something separate from it.

But if the source of its action lies solely within itself, it does not follow that it needs completion from outside.

You have offered no proof that every agent acting through will must derive its action from an external cause. Rather, you have merely asserted this without proof.

This exposes the unsoundness of the very foundation of their argument. We therefore say:

[Eighteenth Argument]

When you stated that the motion of the celestial spheres is voluntary, you said:

“Whatever moves voluntarily must have a beloved separate from itself.”

Then you said:

“The First does not move voluntarily, lest it have a beloved separate from itself, whom we would then need.”

Yet you offered no proof that everything moving voluntarily must need a beloved separate from itself. Rather, you merely asserted this without proof, making it the basis both for establishing the First and for declaring it impossible for the First to produce effects and act, whether through will or otherwise.

But if it acts neither through will nor otherwise, contingent beings cannot exist. Their voluntary motion would therefore be impossible, as would their need for an object of love. Your proof for the existence of the First would thus be invalid.

The very claim on which you based your affirmation of the First and your denial of its actions—a claim for which you offered no proof—itself entails that you have no proof for the existence of the First. Thus, your argument neither establishes the First nor negates anything concerning it.

[Nineteenth Argument]

It may be said:

Why do you say that every agent acting through will, or everything moving voluntarily, must need an object of volition separate from itself that has no need of it? Yet you have not