's whole system is
this "prime mover," "unmoved" and "apart from matter," and that this
conception, up to which his thought leads from every side, as the
necessary implication from the motion everywhere seen in the world, is
his chief contribution to the argument for the existence of the Divine.
Aristotle's chief interest lay in the cosmological problem, and his form
of proof and the result which he reached by it were moulded by this
fact. His argument did not lead him to a Creator of the world, for the
universe, no less than the prime mover, was eternal, and the latter is
nothing more than a principle of reason immanent in the world--pervading
it, not distinguished from it--and the author of motion only in a
passive way, after all, as a sort of magnetic object of desire.[20] In
other places Aristotle makes passing references to different forms of
the argument to prove the existence of the gods,[21] but it is evident
that his own interest centered around this unmoved final cause, and it
is in his proof of its existence from cosmological considerations that
his significance for us lies.

In the post-Aristotelian schools we have an entire change of the point
of view, and instead of a philosophy of nature, such as occupied the
attention of the pre-Socratic thinkers, or a philosophy of mind, such as
Socrates, Plato, and to a large extent, Aristotle attempted to
construct, we find the interest of men in speculative questions centered
in a philosophy of life, of morals. Corresponding to this change in the
point of view, we may easily detect an alteration in the manner of
dealing with the arguments for the existence of the gods.

There was, in the first place, an increased emphasis laid upon this line
of thought, in common with religious subjects in general, and the
reasons for the belief in the existence of the gods (for the Greek
schools never transcended polytheism--when they speak of {theos} they mean
simply the abstract divinity of the many separate divinities) seems, so
far as we may judge from the comparatively scanty remains that have come
down to us, to have been discussed at great length; critically and
negatively by the Sceptics, positively and apparently with full
conviction by the Stoics, and with a curious mixture of both of these
attitudes by the Epicureans. These latter, if the reported doctrine of
Epicurus himself be trustworthy, denied the popular gods, and, in order
to insure freedom, rejected the Stoic doc