It means that he stultified himself by making his concep-
tion of God absolutely contradict the essentials of his sys-
tem. For what is the whole of Aristotle’s philosophy, put
in a nutshell? It is that the Absolute is the universal, but
that the universal does not exist apart from the particu-
lar. Plato supplied the thought of the first clause of the
sentence. Aristotle added the last clause, and it is the es-
sential of his philosophy. To assert that God, the absolute
form, exists as an individual, is flatly to contradict this. It
is not likely that Aristotle should have contradicted himself
in so vital a matter, and in a manner which simply means
that his system falls to the ground like a house of cards.
My conclusion, then, is that it was not Aristotle’s intention
that what he calls God should be regarded as a person. God
is thought, but not subjective thought. He is not thought
existent in a mind, but objective thought, real on its own
account, apart from any mind which thinks it, like Plato’s
Ideas. But Plato’s mistake was to suppose that because
thought is real and objective, it must exist. Aristotle avoids
this error. The absolute thought is the absolutely real. But
it does not exist. With the concept of God the metaphysics
of Aristotle closes.
- Physics, or the Philosophy of Nature.
The existent universe is a scale of being lying between the
two extremes of formless matter and matterless form. But
this must not be merely asserted, as a general {289} princi-
ple. It must be carried out in detail. The passage of matter
into form must be shown in its various stages in the world
of nature. To do this is the object of Aristotle’s Physics, or
philosophy of nature.If nature is to be understood, we must keep in mind cer-
tain general points of view. In the first place, since form
includes end, the entire world-process, as passage of mat-
ter into form, is essentially movement towards ends. Ev-
erything in nature has its end and function. Nothing is
purposeless. Nature seeks everywhere to attain the best
possible. Everywhere we find evidences of design and of ra-
tional plan. Aristotle’s philosophy of nature is essentially
teleological. This does not, however, exclude the principle
of mechanism, and to investigate mechanical causes is part
of the duty of science. But mechanical causes turn out in
the end to be teleological, because the true efficient cause
is the final cause.But if nothing in nature is aimless or useless, this is not to
be interpreted in a narrow anthropocentric spirit. It does
not mean that everything exists for the use of man, that
the sun was created to give him light by day, the moon by
night, and that plants and animals exist only for his food.
It is true that, in a certain sense, everything else sublunary
isforman. For man is the highest in the scale of beings
in this terrestrial sphere, and therefore as the higher end,
he includes all lower ends. But this does not exclude the
fact that lower beings have each its own end. They exist
for themselves and not for us.Another mistake which we must avoid is to suppose that
the design in nature means that nature is conscious of her
designs, or, on the other hand, that there is any {290} ex-
istent consciousness outside the world which governs and