exist without it, does not imply its dependence on an agent or an efficient cause. At most, it means that the essence is conditional upon the attribute and the attribute upon the essence, and that the attribute, if described as necessarily existent, can subsist only in something that possesses it. If someone says, “This entails the necessarily existent being dependent on something other than itself,” it does not follow that this other thing is an agent or an efficient cause. Rather, even supposing it can be called “other,” it is merely a condition of the conditioned entity. The essence being conditional upon its inseparable attribute, and the attribute upon the essence, does not prevent the whole from being necessarily existent in itself, dependent on neither an agent nor an efficient cause. This has been explained at length elsewhere.

The point is that, once it is known that an attribute whose subsistence is conditional upon its subject entails the existence of that subject, an effect dependent on a necessitating agent entails, all the more, the existence of its agent.

It may also be said: The originated things we observe must have an originator. For an originated thing, insofar as it is originated—and anything posited as originated, whether finite or infinite—does not exist of itself; rather, it must have an agent that is not originated. Knowledge of this is self-evident, since the very nature of origination entails dependence on an agent. Thus, anything posited as originated must have an agent. It is therefore impossible for the agent of all originated things to be itself originated; it must consequently be beginningless.