combination of the individual members is itself one of the parts of the whole. Thus it may be said:

The whole consists of the individual members together with their collective configuration. Each of these is contingent, not necessary in itself. There is therefore no whole here separate from its parts.

If it were said, “The whole is necessary through the individual members,” this would amount to saying that one of two contingent parts is necessary through the other: that the part which is contingent in itself—namely, the collective configuration—is necessary through the remaining parts, each of which is contingent in itself.

If that is so, this amounts to one of two contingent things coming into existence through the other, without anything necessary in itself.

It is well known that whatever depends on something contingent in itself is all the more clearly contingent in itself. What is contingent in itself can exist only through something else. On this supposition, therefore, neither of the two would exist. Yet the supposition is that contingent things have come into existence; there must therefore be something outside these contingent things through which they came into existence.

[Responses to this argument from several perspectives]

The second response

It may be said:

The whole, which is a collective configuration, is a relation between individual contingent things, not a self-subsisting substance. It therefore cannot be necessary in itself, for an accident depends on something else, and a relation is among the weakest