moves is a practical end, not the good in its whole extent. For it

initiates movement only so far as something else is for its sake, or

so far as it is the object of that which is for the sake of

something else. And we must suppose that a seeming good may take the

room of actual good, and so may the pleasant, which is itself a

seeming good. From these considerations it is clear that in one regard

that which is eternally moved by the eternal mover is moved in the

same way as every living creature, in another regard differently,

and so while it is moved eternally, the movement of living creatures

has a term. Now the eternal beautiful, and the truly and primarily

good (which is not at one time good, at another time not good), is too

divine and precious to be relative to anything else. The prime mover

then moves, itself being unmoved, whereas desire and its faculty are

moved and so move. But it is not necessary for the last in the chain

of things moved to move something else; wherefore it is plainly

reasonable that motion in place should be the last of what happens

in the region of things happening, since the living creature is

moved and goes forward by reason of desire or purpose, when some

alteration has been set going on the occasion of sensation or

imagination.

7



But how is it that thought (viz. sense, imagination, and thought

proper) is sometimes followed by action, sometimes not; sometimes by

movement, sometimes not? What happens seems parallel to the case of

thinking and inferring about the immovable objects of science. There

the end is the truth seen (for, when one conceives the two

premisses, one at once conceives and comprehends the conclusion),

but here the two premisses result in a conclusion which is an

action- for example, one conceives that every man ought to walk, one

is a man oneself: straightway one walks; or that, in this case, no man

should walk, one is a man: straightway one remains at rest. And one so