But we do not grant that it is anything over and above the individual members that succeed one another without end. It therefore need not have a cause other than the cause of those individual members.

Let us concede that it is something over and above the individual members. Yet what prevents it from being determined by its constituent members—not in the sense that it is determined by one of them, which would entail what you have stated, but rather through each member being determined by another, without end? On this account, it need not depend on a determining cause outside the totality, nor need the determining cause of the totality determine itself or its own cause.”

He then said in reply:

“Their statement: ‘We do not grant that the concept of the totality is anything over and above the individual members that succeed one another without end.’

We reply: If you mean that the concept of the totality is identical to the concept of each individual member, this is plainly absurd. If, however, you mean the collective configuration formed by individual numerical units, then it is clearly something over and above each individual member, which is what we seek to prove.

Their statement: ‘What prevents the totality from being determined by its constituent members in the manner they have described?’

We reply: Either it is said that the totality is determined by all its constituent members taken together