any new state,” is a claim for which they have offered no rational proof, apart from what you have stated: this essence has no deficiency requiring completion from outside itself, nothing above it from which it can gain anything further, and nothing that befalls it that it needs to ward off.

You may therefore be asked:

Does the moving substance need anything outside itself? Is there anything above it from which it gains anything further? Does anything befall it that it needs to ward off, or is this not the case?

If you say:

“It has these attributes while being in motion,”

then possessing these attributes does not preclude the thing described from being in motion. It would therefore be possible for the First to be in motion and to admit occurrences dependent on will within itself, just as the moving substance admits them, since both share these attributes.

If you say:

“That is not the case; rather, things befall the moving substance that it wards off from itself,”

you may be told:

This is not your position. Even supposing that something does befall it, there is nothing above it that wards this off from it, since, according to you, there is no agent above it. Above it there is only an object of love that neither acts nor produces any effect, whether with or without will.

Likewise, if you say:

“It needs completion from outside itself, or there is a substance above it from which it derives something further,”

you may be asked:

Then what other being grants it this increase and relieves its need?

If you say:

“The First,”

then, according to you, the First neither produces any effect nor performs any act, whether by will or otherwise. Nor does its being an object of love entail that it acts upon the lover