This amounts to an open admission that contingent events come into being without any cause. How does that square with his earlier assertion that, once contingents exist, they must have a cause to keep them in being? He censured those who maintained that a cause sufficient for origination is enough; yet his own words imply that contingents have no cause—neither for their coming-to-be nor for their continuance.

To make this clearer, he cites approvingly a remark of the First Teacher: “Theoretical intellect has charge of rational judgments, whereas practical intellect concerns itself with particular actions and particular apprehensions.” He then adds:

“This applies not only to our own wills, but also to the will from which the motion of the heavens proceeds.”

If that is so, it is evident that our contingent acts—arising from our particular volitions and particular cognitions—can occur only through a cause that necessitates them; the mere presence of a universal intellect does not suffice. Yet they contend that the cause of the alterations in our conceptions and volitions—and, indeed, of all contingent events—is celestial motion. Here, however, he says nothing about the cause of that very celestial motion which is supposed to bring about our changes, for according to them nothing exists there except a single, permanent reality: one universal intellect and one fixed, all-embracing will. Where, then, is the cause of these successive volitions and cognitions that allegedly give rise to every contingent event in the heavens and on earth?

Moreover, he goes on to say: “It has therefore become clear that a thing whose permanence…"