 Why, though, is God being in general? Because finite beings are absolutely and immediately dependent upon him for both their being and properties. Indeed, as the only true substance and only true cause, created beings are no more than God's “shadows” or “images.” (While “particular minds” deliberate and choose, and so possess a kind of agency, they lack real power and are thus no more than images of divine agency. Because they lack not only power but also consciousness and will, bodies are even further removed from real agency and hence are, as Edwards says, mere shadows of being.) As the only true substance and only true cause, God is the “head” of the system of beings, its “chief part,” an absolute sovereign whose power and perfection are so great that “all other beings are as nothing to him, and all other excellency…as nothing and less than nothing,…in comparison of his” (End of Creation, 1765; Edwards 1957–, vol. 8, 451). “The whole system of created beings in comparison of him is as the light dust of the balance” (“Miscellanies,” no. 1208; Edwards 1957–, vol. 23, 133). ‘Being in general,’ then, refers to the system of beings — primarily to God but to “particular beings,” too, in so far as they depend upon and more or less adequately reflect him.