Entelechy indicates the perfected act, the completely
actual."--Schw.]

[Footnote 729: Grant's Aristotle's "Ethics," vol. i. p. 184.]

"In Physics dynamis answers to the necessary conditions for the
existence of any thing before that thing exists. It thus corresponds to
yle, both to the prote yle--the first matter, or matter devoid of all
qualities, which is capable of becoming any definite substance, as, for
example, marble; and also to the eschate yle--or matter capable of
receiving form, as marble the form of the statue." Marble then exists
potentially in the simple elements before it is marble. The statue
exists potentially in the marble before it is carved. All objects of
thought exist, either purely in potentiality, or purely in actuality, or
both in potentiality and in actuality. This division makes an entire
chain of all existence. At the one end is matter, the prote yle which
has a merely potential existence, which is necessary as a condition, but
which having no form and no qualities, is totally incapable of being
realized by the mind. At the other end of the chain is pure form, which
is not at all matter, the absolute and the unconditioned, the eternal
substance and energy without matter (ousia aldios kai energeia aneu
dynameos), who can not be thought as non-existing--the self-existent
God. Between these two extremes is the whole row of creatures, which out
of potentiality evermore spring into actual being.[730]

[Footnote 730: Id., ib., vol. i. p. 185.]

The relation of actuality to potentiality is the subject of an extended
and elaborate discussion in book viii., the general results of which may
be summed up in the following propositions:

1. _The relation of Actuality to Potentiality is as the Perfect to the
Imperfect_.--The progress from potentiality to actuality is motion or
production (kinesis or genesis). But this motion is transitional, and in
itself imperfect--it tends towards an end, but does not include the end
in itself. But actuality, if it implies motion, has an end in itself and
for itself; it is a motion desirable for its own sake.[731] The relation
of the potential to the actual Aristotle exhibits by the relation of the
unfinished to the finished work, of the unemployed builder to the one at
work upon his building, of the seed-corn to the tree, of the man who has
the capacity to think, to the man actually engaged in thought.[732]
Potentially the seed-corn is the tree, but the grown-up tr