if the relation of the {283} Absolute to the world is not a time-relation, then it can no more be the end than the beginning. This objection is, as we shall see, a misunderstanding of Aristotle's philosophy. Although things in time strive towards the end, yet the absolute end is not in time at all, or, in other words, the end is never reached. Its relation to the world as end is just as much a logical, and not a time-relation, as its relation to the world as beginning or absolute prius. As far as time is concerned, the universe is without beginning or end. As the world-process is a continual elevation of matter into higher and higher forms, there results the conception that the universe exhibits a continuous scale of being. That is higher in the scale in which form predominates, that lower in which matter outweighs form. At the bottom of the scale will be absolutely formless matter, at the top, absolutely matterless form. Both these extremes, however, are abstractions. Neither of them exists, because matter and form cannot be separated. Whatever exists comes somewhere between the two, and the universe thus exhibits a process of continuous gradations. Motion and change are produced by the effort to pass from the lower to the higher under the attractive force of the end. That which comes at the top of the scale, absolute form, is called by Aristotle, God. And the definitions of God's character follow from this as a matter of course. First, since form is actuality, God alone is absolutely actual. He alone is real. All existent things are more or less unreal. The higher in the scale are the more real, as possessing more form. The scale of being is thus also a scale of reality, shading off through infinite gradations {284} from the absolutely real, God, to the absolutely unreal, formless matter. Secondly, since the principle of form contains the formal, the final, and the efficient causes, God is all these. As formal cause, He is the Idea. He is essentially thought, reason. As final cause, He is the absolute end. He is that to which all beings strive. Each being has no doubt its own end in itself. But as absolute end, God includes all lower ends. And as the end of each thing is the completed perfection of the thing, so, as absolute end, God is absolute perfection. Lastly, as efficient cause, God is the ultimate cause of all motion and becoming. He is the first mover. As such, He is Himself unmoved. That the first mover should be itself unmoved is a necessary consequence of Aristotle's conception of it as end and form. For motion is the transition of a thing towards its end. The absolute end can have no end beyond it, and therefore cannot be moved. Likewise motion is the passage of matter into form. Absolute form cannot pass into any higher form, and is therefore unmoved. But the argument which Aristotle himself more frequently uses to establish the immovability of the first mover is that, unless we so conceive it, no cause of motion appears.