The Complete Aristotle (eng.)

be the best substance; for it is through thinking that its
value belongs to it. Further, whether its substance is the faculty
of thought or the act of thinking, what does it think of? Either of
itself or of something else; and if of something else, either of
the same thing always or of something different. Does it matter,
then, or not, whether it thinks of the good or of any chance thing?
Are there not some things about which it is incredible that it
should think? Evidently, then, it thinks of that which is most
divine and precious, and it does not change; for change would be
change for the worse, and this would be already a movement. First,
then, if ‘thought’ is not the act of thinking but a potency, it
would be reasonable to suppose that the continuity of its thinking
is wearisome to it. Secondly, there would evidently be something
else more precious than thought, viz. that which is thought of. For
both thinking and the act of thought will belong even to one who
thinks of the worst thing in the world, so that if this ought to be
avoided (and it ought, for there are even some things which it is
better not to see than to see), the act of thinking cannot be the
best of things. Therefore it must be of itself that the divine
thought thinks (since it is the most excellent of things), and its
thinking is a thinking on thinking.
    But evidently knowledge and perception and opinion and
understanding have always something else as their object, and
themselves only by the way. Further, if thinking and being thought
of are different, in respect of which does goodness belong to
thought? For to he an act of thinking and to he an object of
thought are not the same thing. We answer that in some cases the
knowledge is the object. In the productive sciences it is the
substance or essence of the object, matter omitted, and in the
theoretical sciences the definition or the act of thinking is the
object. Since, then, thought and the object of thought are not
different in the case of things that have not matter, the divine
thought and its object will be the same, i.e. the thinking will be
one with the object of its thought.
    A further question is left-whether the object of the divine
thought is composite; for if it were, thought would change in
passing from part to part of the whole. We answer that everything
which has not matter is indivisible-as human thought, or rather the
thought of composite beings, is in a certain period of time (for it
does not possess the good at this moment or at that, but its best,
being something different from it, is attained only in a whole
period of time), so throughout eternity is the thought which has
itself for its object.
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10
    We must consider also in which of two ways the nature of the
universe contains the good, and the highest good, whether as
something separate and by itself, or as the order of the parts.
Probably in both ways, as an army does; for its good is found both
in its order and in its leader, and more in the latter; for he does
not depend on the order but it depends on him. And all things are
ordered together somehow, but not all alike,-both fishes and fowls
and plants; and the world is not such that one thing has nothing to
do with another, but they are connected. For all are ordered
together to one end, but it is as in a house, where the freemen are
least at liberty to act at random, but all things or most things
are already ordained for them, while the slaves and the animals do
little for the common good, and for the most part live at random;
for this is the sort of principle that constitutes the nature of
each. I mean, for instance, that all must at least come to be
dissolved into their elements, and there are other functions
similarly in which all share for the good of the whole.
    We must not fail to observe how many impossible or paradoxical
results confront those who hold different views from our own, and
what are the views of the subtler thinkers, and which views are
attended by fewest difficulties. All make all things out of
contraries. But neither ‘all things’ nor ‘out of contraries’ is
right; nor do these thinkers tell us how all the things in which
the contraries are present can be made out of the contraries; for
contraries are not affected by one another. Now for us this
difficulty is solved naturally by the fact that there is a third
element. These thinkers however make one of the two contraries
matter; this is done