We must also consider in which sense the nature of the universe contains the good or the supreme good; whether as something separate and independent, or as the orderly arrangement of its parts.
Probably in both senses, as an army does; for the efficiency of an army consists partly in the order and partly in the general; but chiefly in the latter, because he does not depend upon the order, but the order depends upon him. All things, both fishes and birds and plants, are ordered together in some way, but not in the same way; and the system is not such that there is no relation between one thing and another; there is a definite connection.
Everything is ordered together to one end; but the arrangement is like that in a household, where the free persons have the least liberty to act at random, and have all or most of their actions preordained for them, whereas the slaves and animals have little common responsibility and act for the most part at random; for the nature of each class is a principle such as we have described. Footnote 1The free persons correspond to the heavenly bodies, whose movements are fixed by necessity; the servile class to human beings. Each class acts in accordance with its nature, a principle which produces obedience to duty in the higher creatures, caprice in the lower
( Ross).
I mean, for example, that everything must at least come to dissolution; and similarly there are other respects in which everything contributes to the good of the whole.
We must not fail to observe how many impossibilities and absurdities are involved by other theories, and what views the more enlightened thinkers hold, and what views entail the fewest difficulties.
All thinkers maintain that all things come from contraries; but they are wrong both in saying all things
Footnote 2Because there is an eternal substance, which is not derived from contraries (Aristot. Met. 12.6.1). and in saying that they come from contraries, Footnote 3Things are derived from a substrate as well (Aristot. Met. 12.2.1). nor do they explain how things in which the contraries really are present come from the contraries; for the contraries cannot act upon each other. For us, however, this problem is satisfactorily solved by the fact that there is a third factor. Other thinkers make one of the two contraries matter; e.g., this is done by those Footnote 4See on Aristot. Met. 14.1.4. who make the Unequal matter for the Equal, or the Many matter for the One.
But this also is disposed of in the same way; for the one matter of two contraries is contrary to nothing. Further, on their view everything except Unity itself will partake of evil; for the Bad
Footnote 5The Bad
was identified with the unequal; cf. Aristot. Met. 1.6.10. is itself one of the elements. The other school Footnote 6See Aristot. Met. 12.7.10 does not even regard the Good and the Bad as principles; yet the Good is in the truest sense a principle in all things. The former school is right in holding that the Good is a principle, but they do not explain how it is a principle— whether as an end or as a moving cause or as form.
Empedocles theory is also absurd, for he identifies the Good with Love. Footnote 7Cf. Aristot. Met. 1.4.3. This is a principle both as causing motion (since it combines) and as matter (since it is part of the mixture). Footnote 8Empedocles Fr. 17 (Diels), 18-20. Now even if it so happens that the same thing is a principle both as matter and as causing motion, still the essence of the two principles is not the same. In which respect, then, is Love a principle? And it is also absurd that Strife should be imperishable; strife is the very essence of evil. Footnote 9Cf. Aristot. Met. 9.9.3.
Anaxagoras makes the Good a principle as causing motion; for Mind moves things, but moves them for some end, and therefore there must be some other Good Footnote 10Motion presupposes a final cause, which was not what Anaxagoras meant by Mind.
Cf. Aristot. Met. 1.7.5. —unless it is as we say; for on our view the art of medicine is in a sense health. Footnote 11Aristotle identifies the efficient cause, in a sense, with the final cause. Cf. Aristot. Met. 7.9.3. It is absurd also not to provide a contrary for the Good, i.e. for Mind. Footnote 12In Aristot. Met. 1.6.10 Aristotle describes Anaxagoras as a recognizing contrary principles of good and evil. Moreover, on Aristotle’s own showing, evil cannot be a principle (Aristot. Met. 9.9.3). But all those who recognize the contraries fail to make use of the contraries, unless we systematize their theories.
And none of them explains why some things are perishable and others imperishable; for they make all existing things come from the same first principles. Footnote 13Cf. Aristot. Met. 3.4.11-20. Again, some Footnote 14Cf. Aristot. Met. 12.2.2, 3. make existing things come from not-being, while others, Footnote 15The Eleatics. Cf. Aristot. Met. 1.5.10-13. to avoid this necessity, make all things one. Again, no one explains why there must always be generation, and what the cause of generation is.
Moreover, those who posit two principles must admit another superior principle, Footnote 16i.e., an efficient cause. and so must the exponents of the Forms; for what made or makes particulars participate in the Forms? And on all other views it follows necessarily that there must be something which is contrary to Wisdom or supreme knowledge, but on ours it does not. For there is no contrary to that which is primary,
since all contraries involve matter, and that which has matter exists potentially; and the ignorance which is contrary to Wisdom would tend towards the contrary of the object of Wisdom; but that which is primary has no contrary.
Further, if there is to be nothing else besides sensible things, there will be no first principle, no order, no generation, and no celestial motions, but every principle will be based upon another, Footnote 17If there is nothing but what is sensible or potential, there can be no prime mover (which is actuality) to excite motion in the universe, and no teleology in causation. For the cosmologists on causation see Aristot. Met. 3.3.11-13. as in the accounts of all the cosmologists and physicists.
And if the Forms or numbers are to exist, they will be causes of nothing; or if not of nothing, at least not of motion.
Further, how can extension, i.e. a continuum, be produced from that which is unextended? Number cannot, either as a moving or as a formal cause, produce a continuum. Moreover, no contrary can be essentially productive and kinetic, for then it would be possible for it not to exist;
and further, the act of production would in any case be posterior to the potentiality. Therefore the world of reality is not eternal. But there are real objects which are eternal. Therefore one of these premisses must be rejected. We have described how this may be done. Footnote 18By assuming an eternal actual mover (Aristot. Met. 12.6.4).
Further, in virtue of what the numbers, or soul and body, or in general the form and the object, are one, no one attempts to explain; nor is it possible to do so except on our theory, that it is the moving cause that makes them one. Footnote 19Cf.Aristot. Met. 8.6.
As for those Footnote 20Speusippus and his followers; cf. Aristot. Met. 7.2.4, Aristot. Met. 14.3.8. who maintain that mathematical number is the primary reality, and so go on generating one substance after another and finding different principles for each one, they make the substance of the universe incoherent (for one substance in no way affects another by its existence or non-existence) and give us a great many governing principles. But the world must not be governed badly:
The rule of many is not good; let one be the ruler. Footnote 21Hom. Il.2.204.