ee is the
actuality; the potential philosopher is he who is not at this moment in
a philosophic condition; indeed, every thing is potential which
possesses a principle of development, or of change. Actuality or
entelechy, on the other hand, indicates the _perfect act_, the end
gained, the completed actual; that activity in which the act and the
completeness of the act fall together--as, for example, to see, to
think, where the acting and the completed act are one and the same.

2. _The Relation of Actuality to Potentiality is a causal Relation_.--A
thing which is endued with a simple capacity of being may nevertheless
not actually exist, and a thing may have a capacity of being and really
exist. Since this is the case, there must ensue between non-being and
real being some such principle as _energy_, in order to account for the
transition or change.[733] Energy has here some analogy to motion,
though it must not be confounded with motion. Now you can not predicate
either motion or energy of things which are not. The moment energy is
added to them they are. This transition from potentiality to actuality
must be through the medium of such principles as propension or _free
will_, because propension or free will possess in themselves the power
of originating motion in other things.[734]

[Footnote 731: "Metaphysics," bk. viii. ch. vi.]

[Footnote 732: Ibid., bk. viii. ch. vi.]

[Footnote 733: Ibid., bk. viii. ch. iii.]

[Footnote 734: Ibid., bk. viii. ch. v.]

3. _The Relation of Actuality and Potentiality is a Relation of
Priority_.--Actuality, says Aristotle, is prior to potentiality in the
order of reason, in the order of substance, and also (though not
invariably) in the order of time. The first of all capacities is a
capacity of energizing or assuming a state of activity; for example, a
man who has the capacity of building is one who is skilled in building,
and thus able to use his energy in the art of building.[735] The primary
energizing power must precede that which receives the impression of it,
Form being older than Matter. But if you take the case of any particular
person or thing, we say that its capacity of being that particular
person or thing precedes its being so actually. Yet, though this is the
case in each particular thing, there is always a foregone energy
presumed in some other thing (as a prior seed, plant, man) to which it
owes its existence. One pregnant thought presents itself in the course
o