originator or creator, it knows that this is impossible. If it then conceives of them as infinite in number, this does not render them independent of the originator and creator, nor make them independent of a creator distinct from them. Rather, the more numerous they are, the greater their need for the creator. When something that does not exist by itself is joined to other things that do not exist by themselves, a finite or infinite number of times, this is like joining nonexistent things to one another: it avails them nothing. Indeed, nonexistent things, while nonexistent, do not need an agent; whereas these things, which must have an agent, have an even stronger and more emphatic need for that agent when they become more numerous. An infinite regress of contingent things does not take them outside the nature of contingency, which entails their need for the creator, just as the nature of temporal origination does not exempt temporally originated things from that very nature, which entails their need for an agent.

Someone who allows an infinite succession of temporally originated events and says:

“Each of them is temporally originated, but the kind is not temporally originated,”

cannot say:

“Each contingent thing is contingent, but the aggregate is not contingent,”

just as he cannot say:

“Each existing thing exists, but the aggregate does not exist.”

Nor can he say:

“Each impossible thing is impossible, but the aggregate is not impossible.”

Rather, impossibility applies even more surely to the aggregate of impossible things than to its individual members. Likewise, contingency applies even more surely to the aggregate of contingent things than to its individual members; and the need for the Maker entailed by contingency applies even more surely to the aggregate of contingent things than to its individual members. Existence, however, does not apply more surely to the aggregate of existing things than to its individual members.