each proof is unique, as we shall see in greater detail when we examine each argument. Therefore, the view of a writer like Mascall that the Five Ways should be considered as neither proofs nor distinct arguments, but as an expression of the ‘radically un-self-sufficient character of finite beings’ that leads us to ‘see them as dependent on a transcendent self-sufficient creative Cause’,12 is simply out of the question. One may wish to advance such a position, but it does not represent Aquinas in