entity among all that has been mentioned that exists by itself. Whatever does not exist by itself, if it exists n, must have something that brings it into existence.

This is further clarified by considering the aggregate. If it is said:

“It is contingent, an effect of the successive individual members,”

then here would be a contingent entity added to those contingent entities. Thus, another effect would have been added to the contingent entities that are successive effects. It is evident that adding another effect makes them more dependent on the Necessary Being than they would have been without that additional effect.

Even if it were said:

“A contingent cause has been added to them,”

this would avail them nothing. How much more so, then, if what has been added is a contingent effect!

This is further clarified by the fact that an aggregate may consist of coexistent members or successive members. The former includes the union of a human being’s organs and the union of the parts of a composite body, whether they have a spatial arrangement, as in a body, or not, as with a gathering of angels, human beings, jinn, animals, and others.

An aggregate of successive members, by contrast, includes the succession of events, such as today and yesterday, or one child after another, and similar examples.

An aggregate of coexistent members more properly constitutes a union than one whose individual members succeed one another, for that which