But he gave this latter order of knowledge another very significant title: he called it _theology_ or _theological science_, ἐπιστήμη θεολογίκή, by a denomination derived _a potiori parte_, from its nobler part, its culmination in the knowledge of God. Let us see how. For Aristotle _first philosophy_ is the science of _being and its essential attributes_.(16) Here the mind apprehends its object as _static_ or abstracted from change, and as _immaterial_ or abstracted from quantity, the fundamental attribute of material reality—as ἀκίνητον καὶ χωριστόν. Now it is the substance, nature, or essence of _the things of our direct and immediate experience_, that forms the proper object of this highest science. But in these things the substance, nature, or essence, is not found in _real and actual_ separation from the material attributes of change and quantity; it is _considered_ separately from these only by an effort of mental abstraction. Even the nature of man himself is not wholly immaterial; nor is the spiritual principle in man, his soul, entirely exempt from material conditions. Hence in so far as first philosophy studies the being of the things of our direct experience, its object is immaterial only _negatively_ or _by mental abstraction_. But does this study bring within the scope of our experience any being or reality that is _positively and actually_ exempt from all change and all material conditions? If so the study of this being, the Divine Being, will be the highest effort, the crowning perfection, of _first philosophy_; which we may therefore call the _theological_ science. “If,” writes Aristotle,(17) “there really exists a substance absolutely immutable and immaterial, in a word, a Divine Being—as we hope to prove—then such Being must be the absolutely first and supreme principle, and the science that attains to such Being will be theological.”