A thorough consideration shows that the “absolutely simple One” they posit exists only in the mind, and that nothing can proceed from it. For a One that is simple in every respect—devoid of attributes, power, and action—cannot plausibly exist outside the intellect, nor can anything, whether singular or multiple, emanate from it. In the observable world no effect is produced save by two causes, not by one alone. Even when we imagine a single entity giving rise to an effect, such as heat or cold, that “one” still possesses an attribute, a capacity, and an act inhering in it.

By contrast, the One they hypothesize is nothing more than a mental construct, just as the mind can picture two creators, or an infinite regress of causes, or the removal of both contraries (for example, something that is neither existent nor non-existent) or their conjunction (something both existent and non-existent). Likewise, it can imagine a knower without knowledge, a powerful agent without power, or that knowledge itself is the knower and power itself the powerful one; it can suppose one of two identical alternatives being preferred without a preferring factor, events occurring without a producer, or contingent beings existing without the Necessary Being they require. All such notions are mere products of thought, yet they are impossible in reality.

A third argument runs thus: even if the utterly simple One they propose were conceded to exist outside the mind, it would still be impossible for heterogeneous effects to issue from it, whether directly or through an intermediary—whether one says that the first emanation is a single entity with three aspects or offers some other account. Whatever model they devise entails that diverse kinds flow from the simple One; in other words, that multiplicity springs from sheer unity. To claim simultaneously that multiplicity proceeds from it and that, being a perfectly simple One, only a single effect can proceed from it is to combine two mutually contradictory propositions.