The subject of Mind involves certain difficulties. Mind is held to be of all phenomena the most supernatural; but the question of how we must regard it if it is to be of this nature involves certain difficulties. If Mind thinks nothing, where is its dignity? It is in just the same state as a man who is asleep. If it thinks, but something else determines its thinking, then since that which is its essence is not thinking but potentiality,¹ it cannot be the best reality; because it derives its excellence from the act of thinking. Again, whether its essence is thought or thinking, what does it think? It must think either itself or something else; and if something else, then it must think either the same thing always, or different things at different times. Then does it make any difference, or not, whether it thinks that which is good or thinks at random? Surely it would be absurd for it to think about some subjects. Clearly, then, it thinks that which is most divine and estimable, and does not change; for the change would be for the worse, and anything of this kind would immediately imply some sort of motion. Therefore if Mind is not thinking but a potentiality, (a) it is reasonable to suppose that the continuity of its thinking is laborious²; (b) clearly there must be something else which is more excellent than Mind; i.e. the object of thought; for both thought and the act of thinking will belong even to the thinker of the worst thoughts.³ Therefore if this is to be avoided (as it is, since it is better not to see some things than to see them), thinking cannot be the supreme good. Therefore Mind thinks itself, if it is that which is best; and its thinking is a thinking of thinking. Yet it seems that knowledge and perception and opinion and understanding are always of something else, and only incidentally of themselves. And further, if to think is not the same as to be thought, in respect of which does goodness belong to thought? for the act of thinking and the object of thought have not the same essence. 1075aThe answer is that in some cases the knowledge is the object. In the productive sciences, if we disregard the matter, the substance, i.e. the essence, is the object; but in the speculative sciences the formula or the act of thinking is the object. Therefore since thought and the object of thought are not different in the case of things which contain no matter, they will be the same, and the act of thinking will be one with the object of thought. There still remains the question whether the object of thought is composite; for if so, thought would change in passing from one part of the whole to another. The answer is that everything which contains no matter is indivisible. Just as the human mind, or rather the mind of composite beings,⁴ is in a certain space of time⁵(for it does not possess the good at this or at that moment, but in the course of a certain whole period it attains to the supreme good, which is other than itself), so is absolute self-thought throughout all eternity.

We must also consider in which sense the nature of the universe contains the good or the supreme good; whether as something separate and independent, or as the orderly arrangement of its parts. Probably in both senses, as an army does; for the efficiency of an army consists partly in the order and partly in the general; but chiefly in the latter, because he does not depend upon the order, but the order depends upon him. All things, both fishes and birds and plants, are ordered together in some way, but not in the same way; and the system is not such that there is no relation between one thing and another; there is a definite connection. Everything is ordered together to one end; but the arrangement is like that in a household, where the free persons have the least liberty to act at random, and have all or most of their actions preordained for them, whereas the slaves and animals have little common responsibility and act for the most part at random; for the nature of each class is a principle such as we have described.⁶ I mean, for example, that everything must at least come to dissolution; and similarly there are other respects in which everything contributes to the good of the whole. We must not fail to observe how many impossibilities and absurdities are involved by other theories, and what views the more enlightened thinkers hold, and what views entail the fewest difficulties. All thinkers maintain that all things come from contraries; but they are wrong both in saying “all things”⁷ and in saying that they come from contraries,⁸ nor do they explain how things in which the contraries really are present come from the contraries; for the contraries cannot act upon each other. For us, however, this problem is satisfactorily solved by the fact that there is a third factor. Other thinkers make one of the two contraries matter; e.g., this is done by those⁹ who make the Unequal matter for the Equal, or the Many matter for the One. But this also is disposed of in the same way; for the one matter of two contraries is contrary to nothing. Further, on their view everything except Unity itself will partake of evil; for “the Bad”¹⁰ is itself one of the elements. The other school¹¹ does not even regard the Good and the Bad as principles; yet the Good is in the truest sense a principle in all things. The former school is right in holding that the Good is a principle, but they do not explain how it is a principle— 1075bwhether as an end or as a moving cause or as form. Empedocles theory is also absurd, for he identifies the Good with Love.¹² This is a principle both as causing motion (since it combines) and as matter (since it is part of the mixture).¹³ Now even if it so happens that the same thing is a principle both as matter and as causing motion, still the essence of the two principles is not the same. In which respect, then, is Love a principle? And it is also absurd that Strife should be imperishable; strife is the very essence of evil.¹⁴ Anaxagoras makes the Good a principle as causing motion; for Mind moves things, but moves them for some end, and therefore there must be some other Good¹⁵—unless it is as we say; for on our view the art of medicine is in a sense health.¹⁶ It is absurd also not to provide a contrary for the Good, i.e. for Mind.¹⁷ But all those who recognize the contraries fail to make use of the contraries, unless we systematize their theories. And none of them explains why some things are perishable and others imperishable; for they make all existing things come from the same first principles.¹⁸ Again, some¹⁹ make existing things come from not-being, while others,²⁰ to avoid this necessity, make all things one. Again, no one explains why there must always be generation, and what the cause of generation is. Moreover, those who posit two principles must admit another superior principle,²¹ and so must the exponents of the Forms; for what made or makes particulars participate in the Forms? And on all other views it follows necessarily that there must be something which is contrary to Wisdom or supreme knowledge, but on ours it does not. For there is no contrary to that which is primary, since all contraries involve matter, and that which has matter exists potentially; and the ignorance which is contrary to Wisdom would tend towards the contrary of the object of Wisdom; but that which is primary has no contrary. Further, if there is to be nothing else besides sensible things, there will be no first principle, no order, no generation, and no celestial motions, but every principle will be based upon another,²² as in the accounts of all the cosmologists and physicists. And if the Forms or numbers are to exist, they will be causes of nothing; or if not of nothing, at least not of motion. Further, how can extension, i.e. a continuum, be produced from that which is unextended? Number cannot, either as a moving or as a formal cause, produce a continuum. Moreover, no contrary can be essentially productive and kinetic, for then it would be possible for it not to exist; and further, the act of production would in any case be posterior to the potentiality. Therefore the world of reality is not eternal. But there are real objects which are eternal. Therefore one of these premisses must be rejected. We have described how this may be done.²³ Further, in virtue of what the numbers, or soul and body, or in general the form and the object, are one, no one attempts to explain; nor is it possible to do so except on our theory, that it is the moving cause that makes them one.²⁴ As for those²⁵ who maintain that mathematical number is the primary reality, 1076aand so go on generating one substance after another and finding different principles for each one, they make the substance of the universe incoherent (for one substance in no way affects another by its existence or non-existence) and give us a great many governing principles. But the world must not be governed badly: The rule of many is not good; let one be the ruler.²⁶