For the end of theoretical knowledge is truth, while that of
practical knowledge is action (for even if they consider how things
are, practical men do not study the eternal, but what is relative
and in the present). Now we do not know a truth without its cause; and
a thing has a quality in a higher degree than other things if in
virtue of it the similar quality belongs to the other things as well
(e.g. fire is the hottest of things; for it is the cause of the heat
of all other things); so that that causes derivative truths to be true
is most true. Hence the principles of eternal things must be always
most true (for they are not merely sometimes true, nor is there any
cause of their being, but they themselves are the cause of the being
of other things), so that as each thing is in respect of being, so
is it in respect of truth.
2
But evidently there is a first principle, and the causes of things
are neither an infinite series nor infinitely various in kind. For
neither can one thing proceed from another, as from matter, ad
infinitum (e.g. flesh from earth, earth from air, air from fire, and
so on without stopping), nor can the sources of movement form an
endless series (man for instance being acted on by air, air by the
sun, the sun by Strife, and so on without limit). Similarly the
final causes cannot go on ad infinitum,-walking being for the sake
of health, this for the sake of happiness, happiness for the sake of
something else, and so one thing always for the sake of another.
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