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we express by 'potentially'; we say that potentially, for instance,
a statue of Hermes is in the block of wood and the half-line is in
the whole, because it might be separated out, and we call even the
man who is not studying a man of science, if he is capable of studying;
the thing that stands in contrast to each of these exists actually.
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METAPHYSICS 108
Our meaning can be seen in the particular cases by induction, and
we must not seek a definition of everything but be content to grasp
the analogy, that it is as that which is building is to that which
is capable of building, and the waking to the sleeping, and that which
is seeing to that which has its eyes shut but has sight, and that
which has been shaped out of the matter to the matter, and that which
has been wrought up to the unwrought. Let actuality be defined by
one member of this antithesis, and the potential by the other. But
all things are not said in the same sense to exist actually, but only
by analogy-as A is in B or to B, C is in D or to D; for some are as
movement to potency, and the others as substance to some sort of matter.
"But also the infinite and the void and all similar things are said
to exist potentially and actually in a different sense from that which
applies to many other things, e.g. to that which sees or walks or
is seen. For of the latter class these predicates can at some time
be also truly asserted without qualification; for the seen is so called
sometimes because it is being seen, sometimes because it is capable
of being seen. But the infinite does not exist potentially in the
sense that it will ever actually have separate existence; it exists
potentially only for knowledge. For the fact that the process of dividing
never comes to an end ensures that this activity exists potentially,
but not that the infinite exists separately.
"Since of the actions which have a limit none is an end but all are
relative to the end, e.g. the removing of fat, or fat-removal, and
the bodily parts themselves when one is making them thin are in movement
in this way (i.e. without being already that at which the movement
aims), this is not an action or at least not a complete one (for it
is not an end); but that movement in which the end is present is an
action. E.g. at the same time we are seeing and have seen, are understanding
and have understood, are thinking and have thought (while it is not
true that at the same time we are learning and have learnt, or are
being cured and have been cured). At the same time we are living well
and have lived well, and are happy and have been happy. If not, the
process would have had sometime to cease, as the process of making
thin ceases: but, as things are, it does not cease; we are living
and have lived. Of these processes, then, we must call the one set
movements, and the other actualities. For every movement is incomplete-making
thin, learning, walking, building; these are movements, and incomplete
at that. For it is not true that at the same time a thing is walking
and has walked, or is building and has built, or is coming to be and
has come to be, or is being moved and has been moved, but what is
being moved is different from what has been moved, and what is moving
from what has moved. But it is the same thing that at the same time
has seen and is seeing, seeing, or is thinking and has thought. The
latter sort of process, then, I call an actuality, and the former
a movement.
Part 7 "
"What, and what kind of thing, the actual is, may be taken as explained
by these and similar considerations. But we must distinguish when
a thing exists potentially and when it does not; for it is not at
any and every time. E.g. is earth potentially a man? No-but rather
when it has already become seed, and perhaps not even then. It is
just as it is with being healed; not everything can be healed by the
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METAPHYSICS 109
medical art or by luck, but there is a certain kind of thing which
is capable of it, and only this is potentially healthy. And (1) the
delimiting mark of that which as a result of thought comes to exist
in complete reality from having existed potentially is that if the
agent has willed it it comes to pass if nothing external hinders,
while the condition on the other side-viz. in that which is healed-is
that nothing in it hinders the result. It is on similar terms that
we have what is potentially a house; if nothing in the thing acted
on-i.e. in the matter-prevents it from becoming a house, and if there
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