The first part of the "Summa" is summed up in the premise that God governs the world as the "universal first cause." God sways the intellect; he gives the power to know and impresses the on the mind, and he sways the will in that he holds the good before it as aim, creating the . "To will is nothing else than a certain inclination toward the object of the volition which is the universal good." God works all in all, but so that things also themselves exert their proper efficiency. Here the Areopagitic ideas of the graduated effects of created things play their part in St. Thomas's thought.