We have now proved the existence of God as the cause of the existence of all things. We must now try to arrive at some notion of what God is as far as this is in our power. God cannot be corporeal or body, for in our proof of his existence we began with the world which is body and arrived at the notion of God as the cause of all corporeal existence. If God himself is corporeal our search is not at an end, for we should still want to know the cause of him. Being the cause of all body, he is not body and hence is for our knowledge ultimate, we cannot go beyond him. But if God is not corporeal, he is not subject to motion or rest or anger or favor, for to deny the corporeality of God and still look for these accidents in him is to change the expression and retain the idea. Bodily accidents involve body.[59] The incorporeality of God proves also his unity. For what is not body cannot have the corporeal attributes of quantity or number, hence God cannot be more than one.[60] And there are many powerful arguments besides against a dualistic theory. A unitary effect cannot be the result of two independent causes. For if one is responsible for the whole, there is nothing left for the other, and the assumption of his existence is gratuitous. If the effect consists of two parts of which each does one, we have really two effects. But the universe is one and its parts cannot be separated.[61] Again, if one of them wishes to create a thing and cannot without the help of the other, neither is all-powerful, which is inconsistent with the character of deity. If he can compel the other to help him, they are both under necessity. And if they are free and independent, then if one should desire to keep a body alive and the other to kill it, the body would have to be at the same time alive and dead, which is absurd. Again, if each one can conceal aught from the other, neither is all-knowing. If they cannot, they are not all-powerful.[62] Having proved God's existence, unity and incorporeality, he proceeds to discuss his most essential attributes, which are, Life, Omnipotence, and Omniscience. These easily follow from what was said before. We cannot conceive a creator _ex nihilo_ unless he is all-powerful; power implies life; and the thing made cannot be perfect unless its maker knows what it is going to be before he makes it. These three concepts our reason discovers with one act of its thinking effort, for they are all involved in the concept, Maker. There is no gradual inference from one to the other. The reason we are forced to use three expressions is because of the limitations of language. Hence it must not be thought that they involve plurality in God. They are simply the implications of the one expression, Maker, and as that does not suggest plurality in God's essence, but signifies only that there is a thing made by the maker, so the three derivative terms, Living, Omnipotent, Omniscient, imply no more.