iv.j PLATO AND ARISTOTLE 325 



grees, we shall see the perfection decrease, more and more, 

 down to our sublunary world, in which the cycle of birth, 

 growth and decay imitates and mars the original circle for 

 the last time. So understood, the causal relation between 

 God and the world is seen as an attraction when regarded 

 from below, as an impulsion or a contact when regarded 

 from above, since the first heaven, with its circular move- 

 ment, is an imitation of God and all imitation is the re- 

 ception of a form. Therefore, we perceive God as efficient 

 cause or as final cause, according to the point of view. 

 And yet neither of these two relations is the ultimate 

 causal relation. The true relation is that which is found 

 between the two members of an equation, when the first 

 member is a single term and the second a sum of an end- 

 less number of terms. It is, we may say, the relation of 

 the gold-piece to the small change, if we suppose the change 

 to offer itself automatically as soon as the gold piece is 

 presented. Only thus can we understand why Aristotle 

 has demonstrated the necessity of a first motionless mover, 

 not by founding it on the assertion that the movement 

 of things must have had a beginning, but, on the contrary, 

 by affirming that this movement could not have begun and 

 can never come to an end. If movement exists, or, in 

 other words, if the small change is being counted, the gold- 

 piece is to be found somewhere. And if the counting goes 

 on for ever, having never begun, the single term that is 

 eminently equivalent to it must be eternal. A perpetuity 

 of mobility is possible only if it is backed by an eternity 

 of immutability, which it unwinds in a chain without be- 

 ginning or end. 



Such is the last word of the Greek philosophy. We have 

 not attempted to reconstruct it a priori. It has manifold 

 origins. It is connected by many invisible threads to 

 the soul of ancient Greece. Vain, therefore, the effort 



