tions which may support almost any theory.

The religious character of Plato's philosophy is, as Zeller says, to be
found much more on the moral than on the scientific side, and hence he
was content to leave the more exact formulation of such arguments as
these to his successors. As to the results to which this method led him,
the statement of Zeller, in view of the many conflicting opinions, seems
satisfactory: "In everything that he states concerning the Divinity the
leading point of view is the idea of the Good, the highest metaphysical
and ethical perfection. As this highest Idea stands over all ideas as
the cause of all being and knowing, so over all gods, alike hard to find
and to describe, stands the one, eternal, invisible god, the Framer and
Father of all things."[12] Of the personality of God Plato had no
conception,[13] and it would be a very difficult undertaking to prove
from his extant works that he was, in any real sense of the word, a
theist.

Of the three divisions of the speculative sciences--physical,
mathematical and theological--Aristotle makes the last the "most
excellent,"[14] "for it is conversant about that one amongst entities
which is more entitled to respect than the rest."[15] It is to the
discussion of this subject in Book XI. that the greater part of the
_Metaphysics_ leads up. He has established in the previous portions of
the work the two substances which he calls "natural or
physical"--namely, matter and form--and now he proceeds to justify the
hints he has given of a third substance which is "immovable."[16] It has
been customary to divide this discussion of Aristotle into several
formal theistic arguments,[17] but in the opinion of the writer the text
of the _Metaphysics_ does not lend itself readily to any such cut and
dried arrangement of its argument. Aristotle does, indeed, to avoid the
absurdity of an endless regress, argue from the {kinoumena} and the
{kinounta} of the physical World to a {proton kinoun} which is a pure
{energeia, akineton, aneu hyles}, and hence foreign to all the passivity
and contingency of matter;[18] concludes from motion in the world that
there must be a First Mover;[19] and asserts the actuality of the
eternal as opposed to potentiality; but these arguments are so blended
together, and take each one so much from the others, that I cannot be
convinced that Aristotle had ever clearly differentiated them.

But it is clear enough that the crown of Aristotle