existences, worthy to be reckoned with that Supreme God, Who inhabits the outside of the universe, and imparts their everlasting motion to the heavens. When he speaks of “God,” he has in his mind that Supreme Being, Who, unmoved Himself, is the cause of motion to all things, being the object of reason and of desire—being, in short, the Good. Here the transition from a person to an abstract idea is obvious; but if God is the object of desire to the universe and to Nature, who or what is it that desires Him? Clearly, reason or divine instinct is placed by this theory within Nature itself. In other words, this is Pantheism; it represents Nature as instinct with God, and God in Nature desiring God as the Idea of Good. But Aristotle passes on from this view to describe God as “Thought”—that is, as rather more personal than impersonal—and he asks, on what does that thought think? Thought must have an object, and it will be determined in its character by that object; it will be elevated or deteriorated according as the object on which it thinks is high or low. But this cannot be the case with God, who cannot be subject to these alterations. "God, therefore, must think upon Himself; the thought of God is the thinking upon thought.” Only for a moment (‘Metaphys.’ XI. x. 1) does Aristotle seem to take up something like our point of view, when he says that God may be to the world as the general is to an army. This seems like the modern view, because it would imply something like will in the nature of God. But it is a mere passing metaphor,
