iv.j PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 323 



to bring into full light, because it is that which each of us 

 will reach when, in order to ascend to the origin of things, 

 he follows to the end the natural movement of the intellect. 

 True, the ancient philosophers never formulated it ex- 

 plicitly. They confined themselves to drawing the con- 

 sequences of it, and, in general, they have marked but 

 points of view of it rather than presented it itself. Some- 

 times, indeed, they speak of an attraction, sometimes of an 

 impulsion exercised by the prime mover on the whole of the 

 world. Both views are found in Aristotle, who shows us 

 in the movement of the universe an aspiration of things 

 toward the divine perfection, and consequently an ascent 

 toward God, while he describes it elsewhere as the effect 

 of a contact of God with the first sphere and as descending, 

 consequently, from God to things. The Alexandrians, we 

 think, do no more than follow this double indication when 

 they speak of procession and conversion. Everything is 

 derived from the first principle, and everything aspires to 

 return to it. But these two conceptions of the divine 

 causality can only be identified together if we bring them, 

 both the one and the other, back to a third, which we hold 

 to be fundamental, and which alone will enable us to under- 

 stand, not only why, in what sense, things move in space 

 and time, but also why there is space and time, why there 

 is movement, why there are things. 



This conception, which more and more shows through 

 the reasonings of the Greek philosophers as we go from 

 Plato to Plotinus, we may formulate thus: The affirmation 

 of a reality implies the simultaneous affirmation of all the 

 degrees of reality intermediate between it and nothing. The 

 principle is evident in the case of number: we cannot 

 affirm the number 10 without thereby affirming the exis- 

 tence of the numbers 9, 8, 7, . . ., etc. — in short, of the whole 

 interval between 10 and zero. But here our mind passes 



