is drawn to the magnet. It is the end itself which
exerts this force. And, therefore, the end must be present at the
beginning, for if it were not present it could exert no force. Nay,
more. It is not only present in the beginning, it is anterior to it.
For the end is the cause of the motion, and the cause is logically
prior to its consequence. The end, or the principle of form, is thus
the absolute first in thought and reality, though it may be the last
in time. If, then, {281} we ask what, for Aristotle, is that ultimate
reality, that first principle, from which the entire universe flows,
the answer is, the end, the principle of form. And as form is the
universal, the Idea, we see that his fundamental thesis is the same as
Plato's. It is the one thesis of all idealism, namely, that thought,
the universal, reason, is the absolute being, the foundation of the
world. Where he differs from Plato is in denying that form has any
existence apart from the matter in which it exhibits itself.

Now all this may strike the unsophisticated as very strange. That the
absolute being whence the universe flows should be described as that
which lies at the end of the development of the universe, and that
philosophy should proceed to justify this by asserting that the end is
really prior to the beginning, this is so far removed from the common
man's mode of thought, that it may appear mere paradox. It is,
however, neither strange nor paradoxical. It is essentially sound and
true, and it seems strange to the ordinary man only because it
penetrates so much deeper into things than he can. This thought is, in
fact, essential to a developed idealism, and till it is grasped no
advance can be made in philosophy. Whether it is understood is,
indeed, a good test of whether a man has any talent for philosophy or
not. The fact is that all philosophies of this sort regard time as
unreal, as an appearance. This being so, the relation of the absolute
being, or God, to the world cannot be a relation of time at all. The
common man's idea is that, if there is a first principle or God at
all, He must have existed before the world began, and then, somehow,
perhaps billions of years ago, something happened as a {282} result of
which the world came into being. The Absolute is thus conceived as the
cause, the world as the effect, and the cause always precedes its
effect in time. Or if, on the other hand, we think that the world
never had a beginning, the ord