 In De regno Thomas constructs an Aristotelian teleological argument to the same conclusion. A polity has an end, purpose or goal, which may be sought in a variety of ways, effectively or not, and it is a composite entity consisting of many individuals with their own individual purposes. For both reasons there is needed some directing agency to guide the potentially conflicting individuals effectively to their common goal. Every being is in some way one; a composite entity has a unity of order, i.e., of direction to a single end. In preserving its being, therefore, the directing agency has to preserve the polity in peace and unity by ordering it to a common goal. There is a hierarchy of goals, that is, there are intermediate ends which are also means to higher ends. A polity exists to secure its citizens’ lives, but above living there is living well, i.e., virtuously, and above that there is living so as to attain the “beatific vision” of God (the Christian heaven). If all these ordered ends were attainable simply by human effort, the one supreme directing agency would be concerned with them all; however, to attain the beatific vision requires “grace”, i.e., God’s special help, which natural human activity cannot earn. Besides the state, humanity therefore needs the Church, a human agency God has established to confer grace through the sacraments. Hence there is a distinction between secular government, which uses naturally available means to guide citizens to their final goal, and ecclesiastical government, which uses supernatural means, the sacraments. Secular rulers must be subject to the pope, “for those to whom pertains the care of intermediate ends should be subject to him to whom pertains the care of the ultimate end”.