that they are infinite is impossible and combines two contradictory claims: that every cause has a cause, and that causes and effects ultimately depend upon a cause that itself has no cause.

Thus, what we have established makes clear that causes and effects cannot form an infinite series, and that the claim that they have no end is impossible.

He then said:

“Someone may object: Although positing a totality of infinitely many things is not conceded, what prevents that totality from being contingent in existence, with its existence determined by that of its individual members, and the existence of each member determined by another, and so on without end, as has been proposed?”

He said:

“This is a difficult objection. Perhaps someone other than myself can resolve it.”

I say:

This, then, is his argument for the Necessary Existent; he mentions no other in his books. As for the world’s having a beginning, he argued that others’ methods of establishing it were invalid, and based his own argument on the premise that a body is never without newly occurring accidents, since an accident does not persist for two moments. Having rejected others’ arguments, he argued against the possibility of a series of events with no beginning using the argument given earlier. Its weakness, as explained by al-Urmawī and others, has already been discussed. Then, if the world’s having a beginning is established, he infers an originator from that beginning only by the method of those who