something that has come into being or something eternal. Reason recognizes that an effect which has come into being needs a cause more evidently than an eternal effect does, and that an effect existing without a cause is more inconceivable than a cause existing without an effect. If, then, you allow something to come into being without a cause or anyone bringing it into being, allowing a complete cause to exist while its effect is delayed is more reasonable and further removed from impossibility.

Likewise, if you allow it to proceed from nonexistence, its proceeding from an agent who attains perfection through his action, or an agent who acts without a purpose, is more reasonable and further removed from impossibility than what you have allowed. For this means, at most, that a deficient agent or one acting aimlessly brought it into being. In any case, this is less impossible than its coming into being from nothing.

In short, the dependence of whatever comes into being upon someone who brings it into being is among the most self-evident and clearly known truths. No rational person has disputed this. Whatever other view might be proposed would be more reasonable and further removed from impossibility than this. Once this view is set out, it becomes clear that the impossibility it involves is greater than the impossibility entailed by any other view. This is why we have not dwelt at length on expounding it. Rather, we have discussed views that people have actually espoused—namely, the eternalists who hold that the world is eternal, whether necessarily existent in itself or necessarily existent through its cause. Once the inconsistency of their position becomes clear, the inconsistency of that other position is still more evident. We have already mentioned some of their inconsistencies.

They may also be asked:

These perfections which the celestial sphere acquires by producing the motions it produces—if they were within its power from eternity, why did it delay them? If they were not within its power, then you have affirmed that it is incapable of anything other than