THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY2 The Lives and Opinions

ARISTOTLE 57
ties of nature are due to the inertia of matter resisting the forming force
of purpose hence the abortions and monsters that mar the panorama
of life. Development is not haphazard or accidental (else how could we
explain the almost universal appearance and transmission of useful or-
gans?) ; everything is guided in a certain direction from within, by its
nature and structure and entelechy; 35 the egg of the hen is internally
designed or destined to become not a duck but a chick; the acorn becomes
not a willow but an oak. This does not mean for Aristotle that
there is an external providence designing earthly structures and events;
rather the design is internal, and arises from the type and function of the ,
thing. "Divine Providence coincides completely for Aristotle with the
operation of 36
natural causes."
Yet there is a God, though not perhaps the simple and human god
Conceived by the forgivable anthropomorphism of the adolescent mind.
Aristotle approaches the problem from the old puzzle about motion
how, he asks, does motion begin? He will not accept the possibility that
motion is as beginningless as he conceives matter to be : matter may be
eternal, because it is merely the everlasting possibility of future forms;
but when and how did that vast process of motion and formation begin
which at last filled the wide universe with an infinity of shapes? Surely
motion has a source, says Aristotle; and if we are not to plunge drearily
into an infinite regress, putting back our problem step by step endlessly,
we must posit a prime mover unmoved (primum mobile immotum), a
being incorporeal, indivisible, spaceless, sexless, passionless, changeless,
perfect and eternal. God does not create, but he moves, the world; and he
moves it not as a mechanical force but as the total motive of all operations
in the world; "God moves the world as the beloved object moves the
lover." 37 He is the final cause of nature, the drive and purpose of things,
the form of the world; the principle of its life, the sum of its vital
processes and powers, the inherent goal of its growth, the energizing
entelechy of the whole. He is pure energy; 38 the Scholastic Actus Purus
activity per se; perhaps the mystic "Force" of modern physics and
philosophy. He is not so much a person as a magnetic power. 39
Yet, with his usual inconsistency, Aristotle represents God as selfconscious
spirit. A rather mysterious spirit; for Aristotle's God never doea
anything; he has no desires, no will, no purpose; he is activity so pure
that he never acts. He is
absolutely perfect; therefore he cannot desire
anything; therefore he does nothing. His only occupation is to contem-
plate the essence of things; and since he himself is the essence of all things,
the form of all forms, his sole employment is the contemplation of hin>
**Entelecheia having (echo) its purpose (telos) -within (entos) ; one of those
magnificent Aristotelian terms which gather up into themselves a whole philosophy,
**Ethics f i, 10; Zeller, ii, 329. ^Metaphysics^ ix, 7.
**Ibid, 9 xii, 8.
w Grant, 173.