Thus sound is generated both from what the servant can control and from what he cannot control. All these are causes and conditions; none is a complete cause. It is therefore clear that, if sound and motion are said to coincide in time, motion cannot be made the cause of sound. Rather, the agent producing the sound is the one producing the motion. The most that can be said is that the existence of sound depends on the existence of motion, just as motion is required in that shared causation. What is thus required need not precede what depends upon it; rather, it must coincide with it.

Accordingly, motion and opposite positioning are conditions for sound and a ray of light, without necessarily preceding them. Indeed, to claim that motion and opposite positioning precede them while also maintaining that they coincide with them is to combine two contradictory claims.

If, however, sound and motion are said not to coincide in time, but rather that motion precedes sound, then on this supposition there is no objection to saying that motion precedes sound. The point is that motion cannot precede it in some respect while also coinciding with it in time. Rather, in reality, it must either precede it or coincide with it.

As for mental precedence—perceiving one before the other, or treating one as a condition, a single entity, a simple entity, or the like—this mental ordering does not entail an ordering