This freedom belongs to every one of them in their total or eternal reality, be it burdened and obscured as it may in the world of their temporal experience; and its intrinsic tendency must be to fulfil itself in this external world also.
VII. This Pluralism held in union by reason, this
World of Spirits, is thus the genuine Unmoved One
that moves all Things.[1] Not the solitary God, but
the whole World of Spirits including God, and united
through recognition of him, is the real “Prime
Mover” of which since the culmination of Greek
philosophy we have heard so much. Its oneness is
not that of a single inflexible Unit, leaving no room
for freedom in the many, for a many that is really
many, but is the oneness of uniting harmony, of
spontaneous cooperation, in which every member,
from inner initiative, from native contemplation of
the same Ideal, joins in moving all things
changeable toward the common goal.
VIII. This movement of things changeable toward the goal of a common Ideal is what we have in these days learned to call the process of Evolution. The World of Spirits, as the ground of it, can therefore neither be the product of evolution nor in any
- ↑ Aristotle’s well-known definition of God, Metaphys. xi, 7.
