—of which they had no need(1), while denying the premise that had driven them to it, even though that premise contains truth—or a mixture of truth and falsehood.

Likewise, the group that held the world to be eternal believed that it is impossible for an agent to become an agent after not having been one, and impossible for him to originate a temporal event(2) at no point in time, since time cannot exist in sheer nonexistence. Because they failed to recognize the distinction between the perpetuity of the kind and the perpetuity of a particular entity(3), they supposed that the particular effect itself must be eternal. They therefore affirmed that an agent has an eternal, beginningless effect.

Those among them who then said, “It is inconceivable(4) that an agent should act by choice while his effect is eternal and coexistent with him,” went on to say, “He acts by necessity of his essence, not by choice.” They thus adopted(5) what the great majority of rational people know to be untenable: a particular effect coexistent with its agent(6) from all eternity and forever. They did so to avoid affirming that he(7) becomes an agent after not having been one.

If they were told, “Then adopt these assertions while also maintaining that he can become an agent after not having been one, and can therefore give preponderance to one of two possible acts without any determining factor,” they would be compelled to affirm every falsehood and to accept a consequence whose falsity is manifest without accepting the premise—containing both truth and falsehood—that had driven them to that consequence.