So for mediaeval men, metaphysics stood on logic’s shoulders and represented the final completion of their thought, in a universal system and scheme of God and man and things.[457] But the first part of this proposition had not been true with Greek philosophy. Metaphysics is properly occupied with being, in its ultimate essence and relationships; with the consistent putting together of things, to wit, the presentation or expression of them so as not to disagree with any of the data recognized as pertinent. The thinker considers profoundly, seeking to penetrate the ultimate reality and relationships of things, through which a universal whole is constituted. This makes ontology, metaphysics--the science of being, of causes, and so the science of the first Cause, God. Aristotle called this the “first” philosophy, because lying at the base of all branches of knowledge, and depending on nothing beyond itself. Some time after his death, the Peripatetics and then the Neo-Platonists called this first science by the name of Metaphysics, “after” or “beyond” physics, if one will, perhaps because of the actual order of treatment in the schools. The term Metaphysics is vague enough; either “first” philosophy or “ontology” is preferable. Yet as to Greek philosophy the term has apt historical suggestiveness. For it did come after physics in time, and was in fact evoked by the imperfect method and consequent contradictions of the earlier philosophies. From the beginning, Greek philosophy drove straight at the cause or origin of things--surely the central problem of metaphysics. Thales and the other Ionians began with rational, though crude, hypotheses as to the sources of the universe. These were first attempts to reach a consistent expression of its origin and nature. Each succeeding philosopher considered further, from the vantage-ground of the recognized inconsistencies or inadequacies in the theories of his predecessors. He was thus led on to consider more profoundly the essential relationships of things, the very truth of their relationships, and on and on into the problem of their being. For the verity of relations must be according to the verity of being of the things related. The world about us consists in relationships, of antecedents and sequences, of cause and effect; and our thought of it is made up of consistencies or contradictions, which last we struggle to eliminate, or to transform to consistencies.