to me to imply a fundamental illusion. But then you rnust prove that the Being thus defined, thus demonstrated, is indeed God. You may argue that He is so by definition, and that one is at liberty to confer any meaning one likes to words, provided one defines them first. Granted again; but if you attribute to a word a radically different meaning from that which it usually bears, it will apply to a new object; your reasoning no longer refers to the former one; it is there- fore understood that you are speaking to us of something else. This is precisely what occurs in most cases when the philo- sopher speaks of God. So remote is this conception from the in THE NATURE OF GOD 207 God most men have in mind that if, by some miracle, and contrary to the opinion of philosophers, God as thus defined should step down into the field of experience, none would recognize Him. For religion, be it static or dynamic, regards Him, above all, as a Being who can hold communication with us: now this is just what the God of Aristotle, adopted with a few modifications by most of his successors, is incapable of doing. Without going deeply here into an examination of the Aristotelian notion of the divinity, we shall simply say that it strikes us as raising a double question: (i) Why did Aristotle posit as first principle a motionless Mover, a Thought think- ing itself, self-enclosed, operative only