Several answers may be given to this:

The First

If every member of the whole is contingent in itself and exists only through something else, then no individual member exists through itself, nor does the whole exist through itself. There is therefore nothing here that exists through itself, so existence here can only be through something else.

There must therefore be something else that is neither the entire aggregate of contingent beings nor any contingent being within it. Whatever is neither of these exists through itself and is necessarily the being whose existence is necessary in itself.

As for his statement, “The existence of each member prevails through another,” this means that each contingent being exists through another contingent being in an infinite regress.

The response is that the very nature of contingency encompasses all the individual members and is shared by them. It is therefore inconceivable that any contingent being should fall outside this general, all-encompassing nature. The very nature of contingency entails dependence upon something else. Thus, if contingent beings were supposed to exist without a being whose existence is necessary in itself, it would follow that the nature of contingency was independent of anything else. What is contingent and dependent upon something else would then not be contingent and dependent upon something else. This combines two contradictories.

This is made clear by the fact that, however many contingent beings are postulated, with no finite limit, it follows that