HARMONY OF DETERMINISM AND FREEDOM 365 



formal cause, the principle of discrimination and 

 arrangement, by which the material is kept from 

 being chaotic, and instead is rendered intelligible ; 

 (3) the kinetic, or changing, or efficient cause, by 

 which form is applied to matter, and one form is 

 changed into another ; and (4), most important of all, 

 thQ final cause, the cause "wherefore," — the intelli- 

 gible and recognised aim under which all the first three 

 operate. Some schools, he continues, had used one, 

 some another of the first three causes, some had used 

 more than one, Plato had used all ; but none had used 

 all the four, none had hitherto employed the final 

 cause. 



True. But the great Stagirite might himself have 

 gone a step farther : he might have stated the truth, 

 for it is a truth, that the final cause is the originating 

 and organising member of the system, and that all the 

 other three causes arise from it, as well as act by 

 virtue of it. That is, instead of being simply the most 

 important kind of cause, it is the Cause of causes, 

 and the only kind of cause that applies to the exist- 

 ence of primary realities such as minds. 



Now, what we were really seeing, a moment ago, 

 was how all this is true in the case of the mind that 

 is non-divine. The operation of final causation, as 

 involved in each spirit's ideal of itself as a thoroughly 

 individuated contrast to God, introduces into the 

 spirit's native infinity the non-divine defining Check : 



