or “his creation,” or “his invention,” or any similar expression, nothing is understood by it except that he produced the thing after it had not existed. This premise is self-evident; it needs no innate proofs to establish it, for conceiving its opposite is patently absurd to even the most rudimentary mind.

Therefore, when it is said, “This is the work of so-and-so, and it has always accompanied him, never ceasing,” reason judges this a union of two contraries—as though one were saying, “It is his effect and yet not his effect.” A rational person would conclude that, if matters truly stood thus, calling one of them the agent and the other the act is no more justified than reversing the attribution.

Likewise, if someone claims, “One of the two is contingent, accepting both existence and non-existence, while the other is necessary in itself and can never cease to be,” the innate intellect finds this equally objectionable.

For when it is said, “This may exist and may not exist,” the mind grasps such a statement only with regard to what has come into being. Contingency may refer at times to the agent and at others to the recipient: in the first case one says, “He can write, stand, or speak”; in the second, “This land can be cultivated,” or “This woman can conceive.”

This much is agreed upon by the majority of rational people; it is the doctrine of the leading philosophers—indeed, of the foremost Peripatetics such as Aristotle and his followers—for they applied the term “possible” only to what is originated.