27. To elude this demonstration, some have imagined various necessary beings acting on each other, and mutually producing changes in each other,—by this means they attempt to explain whence the new states come. But these are not only fictions, and evidently groundless cavils in contradiction with the principles of ontology, but they may be destroyed by one conclusive argument.
Let A, B, C, D, be the necessary and unconditioned beings; each is supposed absolutely, and with primitive states, which we shall respectively call a, b, c, d. Then, taking them in their primitive state, the collection of the existences will be united with a collection of necessary and unconditioned states, which we may represent in this formula: Aa, Bb, Cc, Dd, (1.) This expression represents a primitive, necessary, and unconditioned state: now I ask: whence come the changes? All is unconditioned; how then is the conditioned, the mutable introduced?
28. The force of the argument is not weakened by supposing the primitive and mutual action of A, B, C, D, to be implied in the primitive states a, b, c, d. For the mutual actions, being primitive and absolute, would produce primitively and absolutely a result in their respective terms. This result would be primitively necessary, and would be contained in the formula. (1) Therefore the formula would suffer no variation by the new supposition; and consequently there would have been no change of any kind.
29. By imagining that the mutual action does not suppose a primitive state, but a successive series of states, we fall into the infinite series, and consequently into the impossibility of arriving at any term of it, without supposing the infinity to be exhausted, (Ch. II.).
30. Again, the essences of the necessary and unconditioned beings A, B, C, D, being distinct, what reason is there for supposing them to be in relations of activity? What is the ground of this relation if they are all four necessary, unconditioned, and therefore independent of each other?
31. But let us leave such absurdities, and go on with our analysis of the idea of a necessary and unconditioned being. Immutability excludes perfectibility, so that it is necessary either to suppose the summit of perfection primitively in the necessary being, or to admit that it can never attain this perfection. Perfectibility is one of the characteristics of the contingent, which improves its mode of being by a series of transformations; the absolutely necessary is what it is, and can be nothing else.
32. The contingent must emanate from the necessary, the conditioned from the unconditioned; therefore all perfections, of whatever order, must be found in the necessary and unconditioned being; therefore all the perfections of existing reality must be in it, at least, virtually, and those which imply no imperfection must be contained in it formally.[74]
33. The possibility of the non-existent must have a foundation;[75] possible perfections must exist in a real being, if their idea is possible; therefore the infinite scale of perfections, which we conceive in the order of pure possibility, besides those which exist, must be realized in the necessary and unconditioned being.