it is no longer necessary to assume a first principle at all.
But if time is a mere appearance, this whole way of looking
at things must be wrong. God is not related to the world
as cause to effect. It is not a relation of time at all. It is a
logicalrelation. God is rather the logical premise, of which
the world is the conclusion, so that, God granted, the world
follows necessarily, just as, the premises granted, the con-
clusion follows. This is the reason why, in discussing Plato,
we said that it must be possible todeducethe world from
his first principle. If the Absolute were merely the cause of
the world in time, it would not explain the world, for, as
I have so often pointed out, causes explain nothing. But
if the world be deducible from the Absolute, the world is
explained, a reason, not a cause, is given for it, just as the
premises constitute the reason for the conclusion. Now the
conclusion of a syllogism follows from the premises, that
is, the premises come first, the conclusion second. But the
premise only comes first in thought, not in time. It is a
logical succession, not a time-succession. Just in the same
way, the Absolute, or in Aristotle’s language, the form, is
logically first, but is not first in order of time. And though
it is the end, it is in thought the absolute beginning, and
is thus the foundation of the world, the first principle from
which the world flows. The objection may be, taken that
if the relation of the {283} Absolute to the world is not
a time-relation, then it can no more be the end than the
beginning. This objection is, as we shall see, a misunder-
standing of Aristotle’s philosophy. Although things in time
strive towards the end, yet the absolute end is not in time
at all, or, in other words, the end is never reached. Its re-
lation to the world as end is just as much a logical, and not
a time-relation, as its relation to the world as beginning or
absolute prius. As far as time is concerned, the universe is
without beginning or end.As the world-process is a continual elevation of matter into
higher and higher forms, there results the conception that
the universe exhibits a continuous scale of being. That is
higher in the scale in which form predominates, that lower
in which matter outweighs form. At the bottom of the
scale will be absolutely formless matter, at the top, abso-
lutely matterless form. Both these extremes, however, are
abstractions. Neither of them exists, because matter and
form cannot be separated. Whatever exists comes some-
where between the two, and the universe thus exhibits a
process of continuous gradations. Motion and change are
produced by the effort to pass from the lower to the higher
under the attractive force of the end.That which comes at the top of the scale, absolute form,
is called by Aristotle, God. And the definitions of God’s
character follow from this as a matter of course. First, since
form is actuality, God alone is absolutely actual. He alone is
real. All existent things are more or less unreal. The higher
in the scale are the more real, as possessing more form.
The scale of being is thus also a scale of reality, shading off
through infinite gradations {284} from the absolutely real,
God, to the absolutely unreal, formless matter. Secondly,
since the principle of form contains the formal, the final,
and the efficient causes, God is all these. As formal cause,
He is the Idea. He is essentially thought, reason. As final
cause, He is the absolute end. He is that to which all beings
strive. Each being has no doubt its own end in itself. But