Before outlining the modern divisions of Metaphysics we may note that this latter term was not used by Aristotle. We owe it probably to Andronicus of Rhodes († 40 B.C.), who, when arranging a complete edition of Aristotle’s works, placed next in order after the _Physics_, or physical treatises, all the parts and fragments of the master’s works bearing upon the immutable and immaterial object of the _philosophia prima_; these he labelled τὰ μετὰ τὰ (βιβλία) φυσικα, _post physica_, the books _after the physics_: hence the name _metaphysics_,(21) applied to this highest section of speculative philosophy. It was soon noticed that the term, thus fortuitously applied to such investigations, conveyed a very appropriate description of their scope and character if interpreted in the sense of “_supra_-physica,” or “_trans_-physica”: inasmuch as the object of these investigations is a _hyperphysical_ object, an object that is either positively and really, or negatively and by abstraction, beyond the material conditions of quantity and change. St. Thomas combines both meanings of the term when he says that the study of its subject-matter comes naturally _after_ the study of physics, and that we naturally pass from the study of the sensible to that of the suprasensible.(22) The term _philosophia prima_ has now only an historical interest; and the term _theology_, used without qualification, is now generally understood to signify _supernatural_ theology. VI. DEPARTMENTS OF METAPHYSICS: COSMOLOGY, PSYCHOLOGY, AND NATURAL THEOLOGY.—Nowadays the term _Metaphysics_ is understood as synonymous with speculative philosophy: the investigation of the being, nature, or essence, and essential attributes of the realities which are also studied in the various special sciences: the search for the _ultimate_ grounds, reasons and causes of these realities, of which the proximate explanations are sought in the special sciences. We have seen that it has for its special object that most abstract aspect of reality whereby the latter is conceived as changeless and immaterial; and we have seen that a being may have these attributes either by mental abstraction merely, or in actual reality. In other words the philosophical study of things that are really material not only suggests the possibility, but establishes the actual existence, of a Being that is really changeless and immaterial: so that metaphysics in all its amplitude would be _the philosophical science of things that are negatively_ (by abstraction) _or positively_ (in reality) _immaterial_. This distinction suggests a division of metaphysics into _general_ and _special_ metaphysics. The former would be the philosophical study of _all_ being, considered by mental abstraction as immaterial; the latter would be the philosophical study of the really and positively changeless and immaterial Being,—God. The former would naturally fall into two great branches: the study of _inanimate_ nature and the study of