Chapter 7 examines the Fourth Way, which argues from the gradations of being, truth, goodness, and other perfections found in things, to a first cause utmost in being and perfection. After a translation and the premises are given, the chapter explains what assigning a gradation of these terms involves for Aquinas. There is discussion of a key implication of the Five Ways that God is “subsistent being itself,” that God’s essence is God’s existence. Next, there is a discussion of the premise that there is a maximum in every genus which is the cause of all other things in that genus. Thus, there is a maximum in being, truth, and goodness which causes these in all other things. This is God. A closing section discusses the doctrine of continuous creation in Aquinas, that God sustains all else in existence at every moment. There is a look at the contemporary debate over the need for a God to do this, which is termed divine conservation versus existential inertia.