[The second]
It may be said:

The existence of another cannot derive from a being whose own existence does not derive from itself. For its own existence, independence, and subsistence through itself take logical precedence over another’s existence by virtue of its existence, independence through it, and subsistence through it. Thus, if contingent beings are postulated among which none exists through itself, then, all the more, none can be that through which another exists. It is therefore impossible for every contingent being not to exist through itself while nevertheless being an agent that brings another into existence, and so on without end.

This admits of no dispute among rational people who understand it, whether it is said that what acts upon the aggregate of contingent beings is Allah’s power without intermediary causes, or that His power acts upon them through the causes He has created, or that some of them act upon others through necessitation, origination, generation, action, or any other proposed mode. Anyone who holds any of these views must maintain that whatever exerts causal influence derives its existence from something that exists through itself.

No one can say: “Each of them exerts causal influence, yet has nothing from itself but nonexistence, and there is no causally effective being that has existence from itself.” For clear reason shows that, if all these things are postulated such that none has existence from itself or through itself, then none has causal influence from itself or through itself. Indeed, what does not exist through itself and from itself is all the more incapable of exerting causal influence upon another’s existence through itself and from itself. Thus, if there is nothing that exists through itself or exerts causal influence through itself, but rather each