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1075a]
[1]
The answer is that in some cases
the knowledge is the object. In the productive sciences, if we
disregard the matter, the substance, i.e. the essence, is the object;
but in the speculative sciences the formula or the act of thinking is
the object. Therefore since thought and the object of thought are not
different in the case of things which contain no matter, they will be
the same, and the act of thinking will be one with the object of
thought.
There still remains the question whether the
object of thought is composite; for if so, thought would change in
passing from one part of the whole to another. The answer is that
everything which contains no matter is indivisible. Just as the human
mind, or rather the mind of composite beings,
1 is in a certain space of time
2(for
it does not possess the good at this or at that moment, but in the
course of a certain whole period it attains to the supreme good, which
is other than itself), so is absolute self-thought throughout all
eternity.
We must also consider in which sense
the nature of the universe contains the good or the supreme good;
whether as something separate and independent, or as the orderly
arrangement of its parts.Probably in both senses, as an army does; for the efficiency of an
army consists partly in the order and partly in the general; but
chiefly in the latter, because he does not depend upon the order, but
the order depends upon him. All things, both fishes and birds and
plants, are ordered together in some way, but not in the same way; and
the system is not such that there is no relation between one thing and
another; there is a definite connection.Everything is ordered together to one end; but
the arrangement is like that in a household, where the free persons
have the least liberty to act at random,
[20]
and have all or most of their actions preordained
for them, whereas the slaves and animals have little common
responsibility and act for the most part at random; for the nature of
each class is a principle such as we have described.
3 I mean, for example, that
everything must at least come to dissolution; and similarly there are
other respects in which everything contributes to the good of the
whole.
We must not fail to observe
how many impossibilities and absurdities are involved by other
theories, and what views the more enlightened thinkers hold, and what
views entail the fewest difficulties.All thinkers maintain that all things come
from contraries; but they are wrong both in saying "all things"
4 and in saying that
they come from contraries,
5 nor do they
explain how things in which the contraries really are present come
from the contraries; for the contraries cannot act upon each other.
For us, however, this problem is satisfactorily solved by the fact
that there is a third factor. Other thinkers make one of the two
contraries matter; e.g., this is done by those
6 who make the Unequal matter for the Equal, or
the Many matter for the One.But this also is disposed of in the same way;
for the one matter of two contraries is contrary to nothing. Further,
on their view everything except Unity itself will partake of evil; for
"the Bad"
7 is itself one of the elements. The
other school
8 does not even regard
the Good and the Bad as principles; yet the Good is in the truest
sense a principle in all things. The former school is right in holding
that the Good is a principle, but they do not explain how it is a
principle—