. . . Pace Wallace Stevens.
"The history of the universe can thus be seen as
an endless chain of changes, but Aquinas argued
that there must be some transcendent entity that
initiated the chain, something that is itself
unchanging and that already possesses all of the
properties that worldly objects can come to possess.
He also claimed that this entity must be eternal;
because it is the root of all causes, nothing else
could’ve caused it. And unlike all worldly objects,
the transcendent entity is necessary—it must exist."
— Mark Alpert in Scientific American, 12/23/2019