The reply is:

This can only be said when the recipient does not itself proceed from the agent, as with the things that receive the sun’s effects. The sun affects them differently according to their differences: it darkens the cloth-bleacher’s face while whitening the cloth, and moistens fruit at one time while drying it at another. That is why their predecessors said this only of the Active Intellect. They maintained that its emanation upon recipients is delayed because their readiness is delayed, owing to the celestial motions. Thus, in their view, what brings about the recipients’ readiness is not what brings about the emanation.

They said this because they believed in the existence of this intellect. But this account cannot hold for the Originator of all things, from whom come both preparation and provision, and whose action does not depend upon anyone else.

If, however, the agent brings into being both the recipient and what it receives, the question arises afresh, and they are asked:

Why, then, did He make the recipients receive in this particular way rather than another? Why did He make celestial motion occur in this particular way rather than another, when a contingent thing has absolutely nothing of itself—neither a nature nor anything else? Rather, the determining cause is itself what brings its nature and reality into being. Nor does it have a reality in the external world distinct from what exists there. Indeed, the Creator is the Originator of all realities.

Whoever says:

“A contingent thing has an essence in the external world distinct from the entities that exist there,”

or says:

“It is something eternally fixed,”

cannot claim that those nonexistent things necessitated the agent’s having power over some of them but not others, even though they are all contingent, unless some further consideration is invoked—for example, the claim:

“Nothing other than this is possible, and this is the most fitting—or the most perfect and best.”