What he has advanced is inadequate. The statement that the Cause is ever-overflowing, while the coming-to-be of its effect is postponed until receptivity and the requisite conditions arise, can only be said of an effect that depends on two factors. Combustion, for instance, requires both fire and a receptive substrate; hence fire will not burn ruby, the salamander, and the like. Likewise, the sun’s radiation needs a surface capable of receiving it, and that surface does not proceed from the sun itself. They give a similar explanation for what is said to flow from the Active Intellect, whose effusion, they claim, waits upon the elemental mixtures produced by the motions of the celestial spheres—yet the motions of the spheres above the lunar one are not themselves contingent on the Active Intellect’s overflow.

Thus their doctrine that the effusion depends on the preparedness of the recipient can only stand if that preparedness is not itself an outpouring from the same cause. This, however, is impossible with respect to the Necessary Existent, the Originator of everything besides Himself, for He is the agent who brings about the preparedness and the conditions just as He brings about what He bestows upon them; He has absolutely no partner in act or origination. Therefore, when someone claims that the Necessary Existent is universal in His effusion, yet that an effect’s appearance depends on the preparedness of the recipients, we say: that preparedness too is something that has flowed from Him. It is therefore untenable to assert that His effusion embraces every possible being; for if that were so, all contingents would be eternal. And if it is asked, “Why then was the effusion of a temporal event delayed in relation to Him?” they answer, “Because its preparedness was delayed.”