After this, however, he raised the objection that the contingency of the individual members does not entail the contingency of the aggregate, and answered that this objection is untenable.

This objection and its answer suffice in place of that lengthy discussion with its addition of an unnecessary case. Although this case was unnecessary, it did not undermine his proof—unlike his addition concerning the succession of causes, which invalidated his proof even though the proof had no need of it.

[Second]

This becomes clear from the second argument:

He said that if the causes and effects occur in succession, each must necessarily have originated in time. It follows that the first must have originated in time, or that they must all have originated in time, preceded by nonexistence. Some speculative theologians have used this to argue that an infinite succession of temporally originated events is impossible.

The objection to this has already been presented, and the distinction explained between temporal origination of a kind and temporal origination of an individual instance. Where individual instances have always occurred in succession, each is on the same footing as the others: each is preceded by nonexistence, whereas the kind is not preceded by nonexistence.

The statement, “What is beginningless cannot be preceded by nonexistence,” is ambiguous. If what is meant is that a particular individual that is itself beginningless cannot be preceded